Babel — movie review
Iñárritu’s latest is essentially a high minded anthology film tackling the lack of communication, compassion, and empathy in the world today. Given the amount of press this film is receiving, I’ll let you read an in-depth rundown of the narratives elsewhere. Regarding the structure of the film however, Iñárritu’s interleaving of the tales hinders, rather than helps the film. Not once, but many many times he uses a shocking event (chicken wringing, gunshot, pubic flash) to serve as the breakpoint for cutting to another tale. It is fairly abrupt, and more than once serves to pull the viewer out of the moment. By the time you return, the tension is gone, having dissipated over the course of however many other tale segments were presented. If he chose to stick with one tale at a time, not only would such tension be maintained, but it would ensure audience affinity with the characters. Furthermore, if the tales were played out individually, the sequence chosen could have been used to play on audience predjudices. Say, for example, showing the Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett story before showing the side of the shooters, would play on the audience’s notions of terrorists, turning them on their end once the other side was viewed.
Arguably the best tale in the film concerns a deaf mute Japanese girl, played by Rinko Kikuchi (Survive Style 5+, A Taste of Tea). Lacking the capacity for speech and hearing, she is automatically determined damaged goods by anyone she interacts with; even those she literally throws herself at. Her father is near absentee, and her mother a suicide victim. The girl experiences a deep and profound loneliness that, to her, seems completely un-rectifiable. It is because of this that she decides to make herself sexually available to the various males in the story — if they won’t take her seriously as a human being, at least she can receive some semblance of human contact as an object. But even that doesn’t work for her, as her forwardness, combined with their preconceived notions of her and her disability, proves completely off-putting. It’s a heartbreaking state of affairs — easily the most touching and thought provoking of the picture — but somehow Iñárritu manages to mess it up. At the times of the character’s greatest vulnerability Iñárritu’s camera seems transformed into a drooling, obsessive pervert.
Now, I have no problem with nudity. Nudity, used correctly, can convey everything from strength, beauty, grace, and sexuality, to awkwardness, humor, vulnerability, and naivete. But Iñárritu’s repeated observances of “the big hairy monster” seems grossly out of place — you can’t ask the audience to sympathize with a character’s plight, and then leer at them when they are at their most vulnerable. It’s the difference between the frank treatment of nudity and standard exploitation. Due to this, the emotional impact, and the message of the segment, become confused. Even a respected friend of mine missed the point, declaring the segment was just about a “fucked up J-Girl”. You don’t even want to know what they are saying on the Internet Movie Database forums. Regardless, I think Rinko Kikuchi will receive a bit of academy attention this year, if not for her performance, for the fact that the Academy members like to see a woman who can disrobe and weep convincingly.
Alas, I promised I’d write only two paragraphs on Babel, and I am now starting my fourth. In closing, I’ll just say that Babel is an interesting, well made and well acted film, but not quite the great cinematic event everyone is making it out to be. Though it comes close to something, Inaratu’s tendency to dress a simple story in facade of slick, non-linear narrative, a good deal of over-exposition, and yes, his latent “junior high” obsessions, impair the overall flow and feel of the stories. Again, it’s not great, but I guess in these dark days of American cinema, we should be thankful for what we do get.
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