Cannes diary part nine: 'Babel' review

Geoff Andrew examines the eagerly anticipated new film from Alejandro González Iñárritu.

May 23 2006

If proof were still needed that Cannes never fails to come up with a few surprises, Bruno Dumont's 'Flandres' emphatically did the job. Or perhaps not so emphatically, really, as the most surprising thing about this supposedly hard-hitting redemptive fable was its failure to make much of a mark at all. Unusual for a film from the somewhat over-insistently significant auteur responsible for such controversially divisive titles as 'La Vie de Jesus', 'L'Humanité' and 'Twentynine Palms'

And this despite a characteristically portentous account of ordinary young farmers from the titular region of Northern France being called up to some nameless desert war which will see them caught up in an endless round of carnage, rape and torture.

The fact that one of the men finds some sort of grace through his love for a childhood friend who'll spread her legs at the blink of an eye doesn't make the movie any more moving, meaningful or convincing. Mind you, given that the war itself, seemingly fought on foot or horseback by a platoon of half-a-dozen indistinguishable novices, feels so abstract and removed from the contemporary reality invoked in the French scenes, it's hard to credit that Dumont ever expected us to take the clichés of his narrative at all seriously in the first place.

While the film's certainly less ridiculous and objectionable than 'L'Humanité' and his American outing, we're hardly talking essential viewing here. A damp squib, the movie's main virtue is it's 90-minute brevity.

There's a faint whiff of 'so what?', too, about Alejandro González Iñárritu's eagerly awaited 'Babel'. It's another cause-and-consequence tale written by Guillermo Arriaga which ricochets out from a rifle bullet fired by a couple of innocent kids testing their newly acquired weapon as they tend their goats in Morocco's Atlas Mountains.

Set in that country, California and Mexico, and Tokyo, the film keeps switching between three steadily unravelling narrative threads to proffer insights into the relationship between North and South, East and West, rich and poor, young and old, as sundry characters go through the gamut of guilt, grief and dealings with various figures of authority in a post-9/11 world.

The performances – by the likes of Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal and a number of less familiar faces – are fine, and Iñárritu's virtuoso direction is consistently bold, fluent and expressive. But one can't help feeling that he and Arriaga are reaping diminishing returns from their particular style of interwoven narratives. Occasionally the script feels a touch contrived in its efforts to keep all the balls in the air at once, so that although you are left admiring the film's often brilliant technique, you're also aware that it lacks the freshness and visceral power of 'Amores Perros'.

In dealing with the state of the world, both the aforementioned directors might benefit from taking a look at 'Bamako', by Abderrahmane Sissako, the Malian director who gave us the lovely 'Waiting for Happiness' a few years ago.

On paper, Sissako's film might sound dry and heavy-going: in the courtyard of a house shared by various families, a trial is set up; the plaintiff is Africa, the defendant the World Bank, IMF and other international bodies, variously accused of causing or increasing Africa's woes.

But from this simple conceit, Sissako creates a richly varied film of considerable poetry, wit, wisdom and power. The assorted testimonies are eloquent, illuminating and persuasive; but what gives the film its dramatic life is that Sissako repeatedly shows us the world immediately outside the courtyard, both literally and figuratively.

Hence the film is framed by two songs, performed by a nightclub singer who lives in the house joining onto the courtyard; hence too a wonderful western parody, in which Danny Glover rides into town to take on a very motley crew of cowboys who are wreaking murderous havoc among the people of Africa.

Fun, then, but also enormously relevant and insightful as it deals with the pros and cons of the international community's belated and ethically questionable treatment of debt-ridden countries. The film has been one of the gems of the festival. A pity it wasn't included in the main competition.

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