Babel
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Movie Reviews of Babel
Movie Review: We need more films like this.
Summary: 5 Stars
Quite a good film. I'm not sure why it seems to rub some people the wrong way. Perhaps the fact that a Mexican director is showing such international reach is a problem for some people. If so, that's unfortunate because it's a gift that films like this exist - films that expose American audiences to the complex interconnections of the modern world. Don't watch this if you're not willing to sit through a slow, thoughtful and understated film, though. This is a far cry from Brad Pitt's normal fair, but if you've seen and enjoyed any Alejandro González Iñárritu films this one won't disappoint you.
All the acting is good. It's nice seeing Brad Pitt showing his age a bit, looking older. I see this as his setting the groundwork for a continuing career, one that will carry on after his pecs and abs go a little soft. Cate Blanchett is a bit wet, but that's her character. It can't be easy to play someone who spends most of the film writhing in pain or feverish. Adriana Barraza is great. You really feel for her as she stumbles through a worsening situation. Gael García Bernal is always good, even though the character he plays in the one makes all the wrong choices. And Rinko Kikuchi is great too. Yes, her forays into sexuality may make you uncomfortable at times, but such is life. I find her character tragic, sympathetic, and very believable.
I don't think it's at all a trite observation to point out how small our large world is, how much the choices we make have ramifications for others far away. We need more films like this. Thankfully, with the director's success with this and other films, we're going to get them.
Movie Review: Pure art!
Summary: 5 Stars
I love movies like "Babel". I love movies that make me think, that objectively portray the world we live in, both its good and bad sides. I love the movie that can make me cry without being pathetic. I love "Babel".
"Babel" is a movie that features four parallel stories - the desperate attempts of an American tourist (Brad Pitt) to save his wounded wife during their stay in a foreign country, an initiation toa new culture of two young children by their nanny (Oscar-nominated Adriana Barazza), a coming-of-age story of two Moroccan brothers and the frustrating attepts of a mute girl (Oscar-nominated Koji Yakusho). Unlike "Crash", which focused on the cultures crashing against one another and resolving in an "uh-huh" moment of epiphany once the different stories have colided as well, "Babel" is more interested in the personal path of these people, as they represent their culture. In every story, there is a character-defining moment, a bombastic, yet silent portrayal of humanity that these people are desperately trying to embrace. This movie doesn't have a purpose or a final resolution, which may irritate some audiences, but that is not the point - it is a movie made for its own sake, creating art that doesn't need to be justified. And art it is, as it perfectly blends fantastic and diverse soundtracks, acting-styles and photography.
"Babel" is undoubtedly a movie to add to your collection. It is never too shocking, disturbing or exciting, as that would be distasteful. However, if it doesn't make you look at life through a new lens, check if you still have a pulse.
Movie Review: Memorable film
Summary: 5 Stars
Several stories set in places around the world are related only by a freak accident with a rifle: An American couple (Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchette) are on a tour bus in the Moroccan desert when the wife is shot by a some poor children who are trying out their new rifle. Back home in San Diego, the couple's housekeeper takes their children across the border into Mexico with near-tragic results, while the rifle is traced to a businessman in Japan.
The separate-but-ultimately-related-stories technique is similar to that used in the movies Crash and Traffic and used just as effectively. Each story is grim and edge-of-your-seat intense; I don't think I took a deep breath during the whole movie. All of the actors are excellent as is the location photography. We see some good, bad, and a lot of ugly in various cultures as families deal with unexpected events.
The title relates to the Tower of Babel, where God confounded the people's language so they couldn't understand each other. Certainly, each story has frustrating moments of poor communication that become matters of life and death. Though the movie is long, the tension never lets up and I was really caught up in the drama. Highly recommended.
Movie Review: Thought-provoking
Summary: 5 Stars
This Academy award nominated film is certainly one of the most serious films of 2006. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett head the credits, but surprisingly share the real leads with Adriana Barranza, who plays a loving Mexican housekeeper, and the extraordinary Rinko Kikuchi, a deaf Japanese teenager struggling with the demons of disability, adolescence, and the death of her mother. I thought the most compelling themes of the film were about responsibility, fault and guilt. In a world where the random act of a Japanese traveler giving a gift to his guide on a hunting trip sets in motion events with tragic consequences, how can we ever really know the results of our actions? how can we be held responsible? Is anyone to "blame" for what happens to the characters in this film? So much in life is random, but to make sense of it all we search for perpetrators, with often disastrous results.
An older, worn and tired Brad Pitt is excellent in this movie. His prominence on the cover of People magazine every week masks what a fine actor he really is. From the sophisticated humor of the "Oceans" movies, to the trash of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," to the potboiler family saga "Legends of the Fall," to the thought-provoking "Babel," he really has an extraordinary range. I've become a big fan--although the role here didn't really qualify as a lead worthy of a Best Actor nomination.
Movie Review: We're All Related
Summary: 5 Stars
Babel moved 4 generations of our family equally. Here is a story that combines a Yuppie family, a Mexican caregiver (and her family left behind while she became intimate with her charges in California), impoverished Morroccon herding families and a whole village equally as poor, a well-go-do Japanese businessman whose deaf daughter is desperately trying to hook up to recover from her mother's death and her own isolation and profound lonliness. The people seem real, the settings seem real. There's no beautiful manicured Third World cometics in this movie. Poverty is dirty and ugly. Americans can be entitled and ignorant sometimes. Everyone has emotions. Everyone hurts. Sometimes people can be so generous it's unbelievable, and other times they're shockingly self-absorbed. This is a love story. A parable about how we're all related and how what we do reverberates across the globe with consequences we could never imagine. Utterly believable, utterly gripping, fascinating and inspiring. This is one of the four best movies I've ever seen. Even if Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are far from pretty here.