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Babel
USA, 2006
[Alejandro Gonz�lez I��rritu]
Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza, Rinko Kikuchi
Drama
18th November 2006
While there has been much talk of Oscar nods for this particular ensemble flick (and comparisons made to last year's deserved winner Crash), I feel that such speculation is rather premature. While I enjoyed Babel to a degree I certainly do not think it capable of winning an Oscar unless the rest of the 2006 field is as barren as the Moroccan desert it so diligently presents. Unlike Crash, whose protagonists lives intertwined in a beautifully subtle yet demonstrable manner, those in Babel have only the most brief moments together. Though in the case of the Moroccan goatherders and Cate Blanchett's character Susan it is of grave import, it is much less so in the case of the deaf-mute Japanese girl, and to a degree the Mexican nanny. While Chieko's story was an interesting subplot in its own right it was hardly the great twist or key I expected, and damaged the film considerably in its efforts to draw the three continent's stories together.

As
Babel does not run chronologically and often focuses on one strand for quite some time, the story is rather difficult to tell. Essentially it boils down to two young goatherds being given a rifle by their father. While testing it they aim for and hit a tourist bus, seriously injuring Susan (Blanchett) and panicking her husband Richard (Pitt). As they are forced to stay in Morocco while Susan clings to life their poor nanny Amelia is left with no choice but to take the couple's two young children with her to Mexico for her son's wedding. This trip becomes something of a disaster later as you might imagine. Meanwhile Chieko, a young deaf-mute Japanese girl, becomes increasingly horny and frustrated with her lot in life and has an awful day trying to hook up with anyone and everyone. So, the actions of one young foolish boy impact the lives of a dozen people on three continents, and spread out in a ripple to everyone they know (and so on).

Now it sounds great, and much of it is well-filmed and acted. I��rritu does an excellent job of keeping the story moving forward despite the four competing plotlines (Richard and Susan, the goatherds, the Mexican nanny and the Japanese girl) and perhaps a Best Director nomination would not be an unjust reward. However, the film itself often left me scratching my head (mostly over what on Earth Chieko had to do with everyone else) and the implausability of some of the events. Moroccan police are phenomenally quick-acting and especially deductive for instance. But this is the price one pays for having four seperate stories being played out over one day in three totally different countries. You can only have that one single, butterfly-flapping-its-wings moment, whereas in
Crash everyone bumped into almost everyone else during the course of the film (perhaps you could make a case for that being MORE implausible).

At the end of the day all I really grasped from this movie was that you should not really give your uneducated, idiot sons a rifle, that Mexican people are all drunks and nutters, and that the Japanese are the ugliest yet most stylish people in the world. And I really feel that there should be more in there.
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