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Babel (2006)

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Average user rating

9 reviews

Synopsis

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film follows three families suffering tragedy on three different continents.

Movie review

From Time Out London

Martians with wanderlust, beware. The plot of ‘Babel’ turns us all into extraplanetary onlookers, staring down at earth from a smug edit-room above the globe. From there, we witness three stories that give both our planet and cinema a bad name. Well-heeled Californians Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) are on a coach-tour in the Atlas Mountains; back home, their Mexican housekeeper Amelia (Adriana Barraza) is looking after the two kids and readying to travel to Tijuana for a wedding. In Tokyo, Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), a deaf teenager, isn’t getting on well with her businessman dad, who once donated a gun to a Moroccan holiday guide. To complete the circle, back in Morocco two teenage sons of a goat-herder are playing with their dad’s rifle as a coach snakes along the road below… No one’s to blame, but tragic fate intervenes in the lives of all the folk of ‘Babel’. Add several incidences of cultural misunderstanding to the mix and everyone’s in for a bumpy ride and our planet’s looking like a place to avoid at all cost.

If misery is your pornography, ‘Babel’ is your holy grail. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga have previously applied their model of leapfrogging narratives and tragic coincidences to the scale of a city (‘Amores Perros’) and a country (‘21 Grams’) and now they’ve held a similar mirror to the entire globe in an energetic but thoroughly depressing and shallow film that connects its international characters in a whirling maelstrom of glossy, quick-edit and all-round flashy suffering. Ask why Iñárritu and Arriaga have now upgraded to ambitious country-hopping and it’s hard to dodge the niggling feeling that there’s only one answer: because they could. Ask what dramatic benefits there are to the tenuous linking of the film’s three disparate, cross-continental stories and, frankly, I can’t think of one beyond the sort of banal message better suited to a television commercial that implores us to phone home more.

If Iñárritu were to suggest a similar plot of butterfly effects that saw disparate actions and events causing unforeseen happiness, love and comedy across the globe, we’d accuse him of hands-across-the-globe triteness suitable only for fluffy ads or Michael Jackson singles. But flip that happiness into tragedy and what we’re meant to see is searing, meaningful art. It’s time to return to earth; I don’t buy it for a second.

Author: Dave Calhoun 2007-01-15 16:55:19

Time Out London Issue 1900: January 17-24 2007

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User reviews of this film

blib said...

Posted on Nov 20 2009 11:53 What a depressing film. A bit like a "crash' Thta doesn't work.

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johnbee said...

Posted on Aug 16 2009 03:10 Americans, if you go abroad, there wil be lots of brown people. They will be crude and horrid, but in the end you your wife and children will be alright: even brown people in America can not be trusted but try to be nice. Japanese people are mixed up and sex crazed. Policemen are excellent the world over.

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Rohne Hill said...

Posted on Aug 15 2009 23:20 On the tele now.
Decently put together, and an interesting concept at it's genesis perhaps, but it feels like a contrived reaplication of their narrative gimmick.
It's a concept that deserves a better film.
Ultimately pretty vapid.

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George Marshall said...

Posted on Feb 15 2009 22:34 Rarely have I read a Time Out review that is so pretensious and so utterly wrong as this one by Dave Calhoun. Babel is an astonishing achievement which manages to achieve depth whilst maintaining energy and narrative drive. I cannot praise this film strongly enough. I have no doubt that thjs will be rated one of the key films of the decade.

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Magmabulle said...

Posted on Jun 09 2008 10:57 A fascinating story about communication, or perhaps,the lack of such. Brilliant acting, however I don´t agree that the stories are tied together as nicely as many people say.

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Jenni said...

Posted on Apr 07 2008 23:26 Unremittingly bleak and depressing. Unwatchable. There was no goodness, no heart, nothing was learnt

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John Smiles said...

Posted on Feb 07 2008 19:00 Absolutely outstanding piece of cinema. Beautiful, funny, moving and wise. Surprisingly good performance from Pitt balances a superb cast. The contrasts of the lives portrayed in the three storylines and their connections say a lot about the shape of the world. Left me breathless.

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mike hunt said...

Posted on Jan 12 2008 08:47 very funny and enjoyable to watch

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Will P said...

Posted on Dec 20 2007 23:08 Babel is undoubtedly an impressive piece of work, it creates a highly vivid atmosphere and is excellently shot and acted. Its main flaws are that it evokes a very similar mood and uses the same "common-link" narrative as its predecessor; 21 grams. The narrative is stretched to the point of ubiquity,and lacks the intimacy and intensity that was brought to 21 grams by its more concise, comparatively streamlined story line.
In short: excellent director, but a less bloated, more refined screenplay would not go amiss.

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