Babel (2007, HD DVD)

Babel is a theme based movie rather than one driven by plot. It has several plotlines that intersect in very tangential ways. The question is whether these themes work.

There is the Susan (Kate Blanchett) and Richard (Brad Pitt) storyline: Husband and wife are in Morocco, apparently to patch up a rocky relationship. While the tourist bus they are on is in transit Susan gets shot. This causes a frantic situation where Richard finds himself and his wife the victim of international misunderstandings between the US and Morocco about whether the shooting was by terrorists or something else.

Anwar (Mohamed Akzam) buys a rifle from a neighbor so he can keep jackals away from his goats. His sons Ahmed (Said Tarchani) and Yussef (Boubker Ait El Caid) are the principle goatherds, so they will share the rifle. Yussef, the younger brother, is a better shot and his older brother hates this. In an attempt to prove that the bullets will travel the 3 kilometers the neighbor promised, they start shooting. A tourist bus comes into view and it becomes pretty obvious that Yussef s attempt to prove the distance worked. They panic and head back home. This is how plotline b intersects with plotline a above.

The third one involves Richard s and Susan s children and their nanny. Mike (Nathan Gamble) and Debbie (Ella Fanning) are in the care of their undocumented nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza). Her son is getting married and Richard has called from the hospital in Morocco to try to arrange it so she can go, but no one can sit with the children. Her only option is to go to Mexico with the children. On the way back, her nephew Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal) breaks through a border crossing and leaves Amelia and the children stranded in the desert promising to come back. This is plotline c intersecting with plotline a.

The fourth is in Tokyo. Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) is a deaf teen whose mother is dead (later we find out by suicide with a gun). She has a difficult relationship with her father, Yasujiro (Koji Yakusho) as every teenaged girl is going to have. She spends her time with her friends being very sexually frustrated and angry. On her way home from one frustrating evening the police approach her about her father. She believes this is because of the investigation, months earlier, about her mother. It isn t; it involves a hunting rifle that was registered to him. Months earlier Yasujiro was in Morocco hunting. He gave his rifle to his guide. This is where plot d intersects plot b.

I have given them an arbitrary order in the movie they are all coequal. They are all told in intersecting mini-chapters. Each plotline is in a linear order, but it isn t until the end that you discover the order of the events as a whole.

It wasn t until I started writing the review that it all clicked and I understand. There is a so-so film called 20 Bucks which follows a $20 bill from person to person for a hundred minutes the only thing that links them is the piece of currency. In Babel it is the rifle (this is tangential for the Amelia and children story, but still linked because we see what the impact would be if the children are left motherless more on this in a moment). The problem is that you have to hold all the disparate pieces together for over two hours; if you prefer movies with standard plots, this not for you. If you liked Traffic and Crash then you will at least not be bothered by the narrative structure of Babel.

The film succeeds brilliantly in three areas. Like the other one word titled films, the camerawork is driven mostly by handheld units. This gives the viewer a much more voyeuristic aspect than standard dolly driven cameras. This means you become more emotionally attached to the characters (at least in my opinion). The movie is also 4 stories of varying chaos, so the shaky camera makes sure you are never quite on level or balanced ground.

Babel of course is pointing to the biblical story of how the earth came to be covered in many languages. The Moroccan form of Arabic, English, French, Mexican, Japanese, and Japanese sign language each have a place (French only a small one, in the spirit of full disclosure). What this implies would ordinarily be confusion. But director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and writer Guillermo Arriga make sure that there are rather long stretches without anyone speaking, but using gestures to make themselves understood (most simply with a hug, most complexly with sign language). Hand shakes, hands in the position of surrender, praying, and several other gestures that are nearly universal are given equal footing with spoken language. So rather than confusion, what we have is something surprisingly easy to understand, and beautiful in its presentation.

The third is, to me, the most touching and thing that will last longest in memory. Despite Pitt and Blanchett (who each put in performances equal to their usual high quality), the actors who shine are the children. Ahmed and Yussef are brilliant. The sibling rivalry and the immediate attachment as brothers after the tragedy are so realistic that it seems like watching a home movie. Mike and Debbie are the same, just a couple of years younger. They bare the weight of the sins of the adults who are entrusted with their care the sins were not ones of motive but of accident, but sins all the same. Their joy, their fear, their shock are all heart-rending. Cheiko does the teenage angst plus the additional angst of not fitting into a culture that demands conformity that she cannot truly make happen seem just as real and shocking as the younger children in their roles. I think the message that runs through the story of the dangers of guns (which seems kind of pedestrian and trite just saying it) is so subtle and maturely handled that it is just tragedy and pathos instead of a message movie.

The one thing that doesn t really work for me is the Amelia story. For all intents and purposes, and due to an emotional trauma for Richard and Susan, she is Mike s and Debbie s mother. Her story of being undocumented and having to return to Mexico is sad, and extremely well acted, but doesn t really fit the main theme of the movie. It doesn t exactly feel like it was tacked on because it is as professionally done, but in the final analysis, it is difficult to know where to put it.

It is a thoughtful movie that requires all of your attentions. It is a film that you can watch more than once and get more out of with each viewing. It isn t perfect, but it is worth the time and effort.