At last, a film that is critically acclaimed that I do not find totally overrated! While I don't think Babel is a masterpeice as some belevie, it is a very strong film, better than most. It is 140 minuets long and rarely boring, and has a few stirring moments. It is probably the best film of a poor genre (the Crash-ensamble film).
Babel is certainly ambitious, taking place in four countries and in four langauges (English, Spanish, Arabic and Japanese). There are also four plotlines: In the first, two Arab kids in Morroco unthinkingly shoot a bus and hurt an American tourist, which is later revealed to be (in the second plotline) Cate Blanchet, who is having an arguement with her husband (Brad Pitt). The third story revolves around a Mexican nanny (Adriana Barraza) who is caught in a bind when the parents of the kids she's caring for are late in returning from a trip and don't send a replacement, forcing her to take the kids along to her son's weeding. The fourth takes place in Japan and follows deaf teenager Cheiko (Rinko Kikuchi), who has serious emotional problems, which manifest in compulsive sexual behavior.
Because this is a ensamble piece, the four stories are evetully tied together, and that's the film's weakness. I always have trouble beleiving the coincidences in films like this, and those coincidences are not essential to the point of the film. The four stories are tied together themeatically, so why do we need them to be linked literally? I also found the movies central theme about miscommunication to be somewhat obvious and in the "duh" category.
But the film exells in other departmentrs. Unlike the cartoon characters of Crash and the affectionate but somewhat archtypal creatures in Bobby, Inarritu suceeds in creating three deminsional people that we can care about. No one here is defined by a single characteristic of nationality or ethnicity. In fact, this is real humanist film (in the positive sense) as it argues that humans are more alike than not alike. The acting is all exceptional all around, but special praise must go to Barrazza, who has a few scenes of real desperation that must have been torturous to shoot.
I don't think that this is the best film of the year, but it's very strong, and I reccamend it heartily.
Babel (2006)