Babel was my Netflix movie of the week. It is one of the two best picture nominees from last year's Oscars that I still hadn't seen, and that's mainly because I actively put off watching it. I had heard things about it, good and bad, and the bad things deterred me. I knew this would be a movie that was hard to watch and, perhaps, hard to understand, so I felt no rush to watch it. Thanks to the power of Netflix and their program for generating recommendations, there it appeared on my queue, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Babel is a complex interweaving and intersection of lives hailing from around the globe; the intersections are at once random and ordained, and the ties that bind focus on the human condition, particularly as it relates to innocent mistakes, careless choices, and the ensuing consequences. Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) are vacationing in Morocco because their youngest child, Sam, apparently died of SIDS. That's what I assume from the scant clues offered, anyway. Susan is deeply depressed, and Richard is running away from the tragedy. They leave their other two children, Mike and Debbie (Elle Fanning), in the care of the housekeeper Amelia in San Diego, who learns that Richard and Susan will not be returning home in time for her son's wedding in Mexico. The promised babysitter replacement does not appear, so Amelia elects to take her young charges with her. Richard and Susan are not returning home because some young Moroccan boys, who have been given the care of a rifle newly purchased by their father to shoot jackals threatening to eat members of their thinning goat herd, decide to test its aim and power by shooting the tour bus on which Richard and Susan are returning home. Susan is wounded, and the incident is quickly labeled an act of terrorism once the American embassy gets word of it, complicating the likelihood of medical care reaching Susan, who is bleeding severely, in the middle of the desert. The resulting manhunt and investigation leads Moroccan police to the registered owner of the gun, a Japanese businessman, whose daughter Chieko is railing from the grief over her mother's death by suicide (self-inflicted gunshot wound). Chieko's emotions are so to the boiling point, including her developing sexuality, she begins to act out in various ways, resulting in her ejection from her volleyball game, experimenting with drugs, and exposing herself to boys in crowded places. Chieko's father struggles to connect to his emotionally distant daughter. And so the swirl of these four stories continues through the end of the movie, with various endings and consequences for each group of people.
Like my Devil Wears Prada review, I am going to outline three good points and three bad points about this very different film because I am extremely neutral about it. Actually, my kneejerk inclination was to dislike the movie because of the bad points, but I also recognize the good points, so I thought this format would be best-suited to this review.
Good
1. The film is a searing portrait of human emotion, though the emotions common to all four scenarios are despair and grief as it relates to death and loss (Amelia's story resulted in the loss of her life as she knew it). The performances by the entire ensemble were excellent considering the challenge that this material must have presented each actor. I was particularly impressed with Rinko Kikuchi, who played Chieko. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as the helpless and confused girl. I think she might have deserved it over Jennifer Hudson, who won it for Dreamgirls. Her range was stunning, and she had me convinced from moment one, unlike Ms. Hudson as Effie.
2. The layers of the film and the depth and scope of the picture being painted were original and novel, even if based on everyday human tendencies. On the one hand, these kinds of things--random acts of violence, getting lost, risky experimentation, careless play--happen everyday. On the other hand, Babel presents the extremes: mistakes by good people that are tragic in the way they unfold. It's the kind of film that presents the downsides in a way to make the viewer second guess personal choices and consider how lucky s/he really is.
3. The score, which won the Oscar, was awesome. The composer incorporated a variety of styles to reflect the cultural backdrop being depicted at the moment, whether it be Morocco, Japan, America, or Mexico. I noticed the score, which I tend to do during longer/slower films, and was amazed by its own depth, layers, and levels of complexity. The score, I think, singlehandedly made the film a rich, emotional experience, much moreso than even the story or performances.
Bad
1. My number one complaint about this film, and a complaint I had heard prior to watching the film as well, was whether it was really necessary to victimize children, or show children being victimized, to further the plot (spoilers ahead). Each story was tragic in and of itself, so I'm not sure that, particularly, the sexualization of children was necessary in all places. In the Moroccan family, the youngest child, the sharpshooter, watches his sister undress and then self-gratifies prior to shooting the bus. Was this to show his underdeveloped moral judgment? In Japan, Chieko constantly exposes herself, up until the final painful scene in which she ultimately goes full frontal to proposition a kind and handsome policeman investigating the connection of the rifle to the incident in Morocco. Even Mike and Debbie, while not sexualized, have their lives endangered by Amelia's drunken nephew (was that the guy from Lost? I think it was). I suppose the use of the children was to make the viewer care more about the adults in the equation, except in the Moroccan family, where the children were central to the story. Still, I am not sure that this is enough of an artistic reason for me to be copacetic with what I saw.
2. The film was long and slow. The stories were not presented in really any logical or chronological order, which made some of them, it seemed, harder to follow, though the connection between the four was never hard to follow. The film dragged in places. Not all dramas about these kinds of subjects drag, but this one did, and that's because not all of the stories were engaging. I felt more for some characters than others, and when my interest in a character waned, so too did my interest in the film, which was character-based. I'm not sure if that is a flaw in the writing or my own personal biases, which leads to number three....
3. The character development was inconsistent at best. Some characters (Chieko; Richard/Susan) had clear motivations for their actions. Other characters (the Moroccan boys, Amelia) did not. Why would these kids, even if they are just ignorant kids shooting a gun, decide to shoot a moving vehicle? That just seemed so stupid, no matter how far within the desert one lives. Why would Amelia get into the vehicle with her drunken nephew, when she knows he's drunk, when she knows Mike and Debbie's parents won't be back for a bit? Just because the kids have soccer practice the next day? That can't wait? People make choices without thinking things through, that much is true, but I am of the opinion that all choices have some thought process behind them, even if the thought process isn't thorough or well-reasoned, and even stupid choices predominantly have not-so-stupid motivations. Were we to think that the older son wanted so badly to prove his worth that he would shoot at a bus full of people? Or, that the younger son had such compromised moral judgment from watching his sister undress that he would think shooting at a bus would be ok? Or, that Amelia was old and simple and too trusting? Maybe, but I feel like I am just guessing there, when the other characters had more flushing out. In a film like this, I don't think the viewer should be guessing as much as appreciating the connections and interweaving of these four groups of lives.
All in all, Babel was a film with a certain beauty that was also ugly enough to leave a sour taste in my mouth. Still, in fairness to the originality and detail paid to the study of the human condition in this film, I rate it a 6.5 (slightly better than cute/mediocre but worse than shaky). It was not entertaining for me and did not leave me with the desire to truly think about the film, aside from the haunting circumstances of Chieko's life, easily the most developed and heart-wrenching character in the piece. As for the test, obviously it does not pass. I never want to watch this film again, mainly for the number one bad point I described above. While I appreciate a dark film examining the underbelly of humanity and human existence, sometimes there are things I just don't think are appropriate to watch especially if the artistic reason behind including such things is not clear or justified in my eyes. Babel is a tough film to take, and it's with that warning that I would discuss this film with interested parties in the future.