Director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's follow-up to 21 Grams is the equally dire and A-list actor studded Babel, which is visually dazzling and, despite its significant pacing problems, effectively heartbreaking as it weaves together the tales of an affection-starved deaf Japanese schoolgirl, a pair of preteen brothers in rural Morocco and the dysfunctional, vacationing San Diego couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) they shoot at, and the bad choices the couple's nanny must make in their absence.
While you can never completely put the fact that you are watching Pitt and Blanchett out of your mind, they both give charged, emotional performances. Here Pitt inhabits this role of a 40-something family man with a touch of gravitas that will serve him well as he ages into older roles. Blanchett is good as well, though getting shot at in a Moroccan dessert while the international community bickers about whether it was terrorism or not, is the kind of meaty role that makes for Oscar nominations. But Pitt and Blanchett are not the only stars here. Rinko Kikuchi, whose expressive face and body language conveys everything her deaf-mute character cannot say, Gael Garcia Bernal, as the nanny's well-meaning but irresponsible nephew, Adriana Barraza (the nanny, Amelia), and Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait El Caid as the Moroccan boys are also impressive.
Veteran Innaritu screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga slowly unfolds his interlocking narrative, and while some of the connections — the bickering couple in Morocco and their nanny and kids back home — are obvious, others (such as how the flirty, moody Japanese teen fits in) unfold only inch-by-inch, an effect that serves the film well by increasing tension in some places, and stunting it in others by dragging out some of the scenes to linger a little too long on the various international vistas on display here. Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, however, is deft in mixing the thoroughly modern Tokyo scenes with the working class Mexican world, the dusty, vast scrub of small-village Morocco, and the bland Americana of upper-middle class San Diego suburbia.
With its mash-up of English, Spanish, Japanese, sign-language, and Arabic, the film's title is more than apt. What unfolds, courtesy of Innaritu's facility for telling a complex story well and the excellent cast's ability to become to their characters, is a commentary on how the world of the early 21st century is an uneasy, constantly upset balance of cultures whose every move has repercussions upon each other. A bullet fired in Morocco touches a suicide in Japan, an immigration catastrophe in Mexico, and a San Diego marriage. It is one dire vision of the reality of what Marshall McLuhan's global village has become.
— Jessica Letkemann
Babel's director, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, and star, Brad Pitt.
Photo by Jennifer Cooper
