Title: Movie Review - Babel
agnesleong - January 23, 2007 04:28 PM (GMT)
To share some review on the movie -
Babel (M18)
2 Hours and 23 mins
Cast by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal,
Rinko Kikuchi, Adriana Barraza
Babel
Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Paramount Vantage 10/07 Feature Film
Babel focuses on four families in four countries on three continents in a multidimensional story that engages the senses, startles the mind, and engenders within our consciousness an appreciation for small acts of kindness and compassion in a world filled with hatred, violence, confusion, dread, suffering and loss. This extraordinary film is the third in a trilogy by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu that includes with Amores Perros and 21 Grams.
People today are cut off from each other by race, language, culture, and tradition. Although the mass media and the Internet claim to be uniting us, the separations are more egregious now than ever before. Ideas about who belongs in our communities, coupled with prejudice against outsiders, strangers, and foreigners, make us feel ill-at-ease wherever we are. We cluster in small units of family and community while eschewing religious allegiance to the human family. We emphasize differences rather than celebrate commonalities. The Babel of the Bible is nothing compared to the many forms of Babel in our time. Babel exists wherever people are at each other's throats or stuck in situations that bring out their fear, anger, hatred, or violent behavior.
Inarritu and screenplay writer Guillermo Arriaga plunge us into the suffering, trials, and tribulations of people dealing with hardships that would test any soul. In a small village in the mountains of Morocco, a goat-herder purchases a rifle from a neighbor, who had received it as a gift after serving as a guide for a Japanese hunter. The herder tries the weapon out with his two young sons and then gives it to them with orders to shoot some of the jackals that are pestering the goats. Later the two boys decided to test the gun's range by firing at vehicles on a road below their fields. The younger boy shoots at a tourist bus, and it stops shortly afterwards. Someone has been hit.
Amelia (Adriana Barraza) has been the nanny for two young American children in southern California since they were born. Their parents are on a trip overseas when the time comes for her to go to Mexico to attend her son's wedding. Unable to find anyone to look after the kids, she decides to take them with her. Amelia's nephew Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal) volunteers to serve as her chauffeur. The wedding is a joyful occasion and even the children enjoy themselves. But as they are returning home, an aggressive guard at the border triggers Santiago's temper, creating a situation where Amelia and the children in her care are put in grave danger.
Back in Morocco, Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett), the parents of the California kids, are not having a good time. They have gone on the trip to heal their grief over the death of their third child as an infant. Susan feels uncomfortable in this desolate country; at a restaurant she throws away some water her husband is about to drink, sure that it is contaminated. On the bus, she rests her head against the window and then is shot in the shoulder. Everyone on the bus thinks they are being attacked by terrorists.
With no hospitals nearby, the driver takes them to his village where a veterinarian stitches up Susan's wound and an old lady nurses her. A very kind and hospitable Muslim gives them shelter. He is calm presence in a situation which has aroused Richard to a state of panicked helplessness. The situation grows more tense when the other tourists, fearing for their lives, take the bus and leave them behind.
In Tokyo, Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), a deaf-mute student, loses a volleyball game for her team due to her anger at an unfair call by the referee. She is a very troubled adolescent, who expressing her rage through unrestrained sexual behavior. At a restaurant, she removes her panties in the lavatory and, making sure a young man at a nearby table is looking at her, flashes him a view of her crotch. Later, she and her best friend do pills and drink whiskey with some boys who take them to a disco. Chieko tries to lose herself in the place but is unable to do so. She returns to her sexual aggressiveness with a dentist who orders her out of his office. Chieko goes home and has an encounter with a stranger that proves to be somewhat surprising and tender.
At Cannes Film Festival, Inarritu said in an interview: "I feel that the connection that I want to make is not a physical or coincidental connection, nor a plot connection. I think as human beings, what makes us happy is very different; it depends on cultures or races. What makes us sad and miserable is exactly what we share, and that thing is basically the impossibility of love, the impossibility to be touched by love, the impossibility to touch with love and express it. That is one of the most painful things that every human being has experienced, as well as feeling vulnerable to love. I think those two things are the most tragic things that bring us together. This film and the connections to the characters is about that, all of them on different levels, no matter which culture, no matter which country, religion, age, social class . . . All of these people are at an inability to express themselves, with their husbands, with their wives, with their kids. When you cannot be touched by words, and when you cannot touch people with words, then the body becomes a weapon, an invitation, and that is what is tremendous about the story. I feel that you saw a story about human beings and not about Moroccans, Mexicans, or Americans."
Babel is the kind of movie that you will want to see again. Repeated viewings give you a chance to explore the small moments of light and love and kindness and compassion that pass by in a flash. Also pay attention to both the flaws and the inner reserves of resiliency that are evident in these characters as they push against settings where they feel uncomfortable and stressed out.
Love is celebrated in all the world's religions as the most powerful and poignant emotion. Babel will give you access to the many shades of love as it shows what happens when it is ignored, squandered, or annihilated by anger, fear, hatred, and violence.
By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
********************************************************************
If a butterfly flaps its wings in the rain forest, it will, if nothing else, set off an infinite chain reaction in the minds of Alejandro González Iñárritu and his creative collaborator, Guillermo Arriaga. The director and screenwriter have a thing for causal connections, which, in "Babel," they literally track to the ends of the Earth.
As in "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams," their two previous collaborations, "Babel," which won the best director award at Cannes, ties together four seemingly unconnected stories that are eventually revealed to be inextricably linked to one another. The first story begins in the Moroccan desert, where a farmer named Abdullah (Mustapha Rachidi) buys a rifle to protect his goats from jackals, and hands it over to his two young sons, Yussef (Boubker Ait El Caid) and Ahmed (Said Tarchani), who, fooling around, take a careless potshot at a passing bus.
The second takes place in San Diego and later in a small Mexican border town, where Amelia (Adriana Barraza), a Mexican nanny, takes her young charges Mike (Nathan Gamble) and Debbie (Elle Fanning) to attend her son's wedding when their traveling parents refuse to let the woman take the day off. What at first seems like heartless authoritarianism on the part of her employer turns out to be the result of a tragedy. Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) are traveling in Morocco when their bus is attacked in what appears to be a terrorist incident.
As its title implies, "Babel" is about the difficulty of human communication, but although the stories unfold in four countries and in five languages — English, Arabic, Spanish, Japanese and sign — language is far from the principal barrier. Instead, the film explores the ways in which cultural assumptions and biases tend to obscure reality even when reality is plain, and the way our perceived differences keep us from finding a human connection to one other.
If the relationship among the first three stories — each gingerly perched on an explosive political issue — soon become apparent (Susan's freak accident is quickly spun into an international crisis; Amelia falls into an immigration quagmire when her drunk nephew, played by Gael García Bernal, provokes the border guards on their way home), the fourth story takes awhile to reveal itself.
Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), a deaf Japanese teenager whose mother has recently committed suicide, acts out her grief and feelings of isolation by throwing herself at every man or boy who crosses her path. She drifts through the crowded, pulsing streets of Tokyo, shot by cinematographer Rodrigo Pietro as though the city were a beautiful, whimsical contraption that appears even more startling and dreamlike when the sound drops out. Chieko's connection to the others is tenuous, but her experience provides the lyrical counterpoint to what are otherwise Kafkaesque tragedies about individuals swallowed up by the bureaucratic machinery of nationhood.
The beauty of this film is in its lapidary details, which sparkle with feeling and surprise. González Iñárritu and Arriaga, both Mexican (González Iñárritu now resides with his family in the United States), are particularly attuned to the vulnerability of the foreigner abroad — whether that vulnerability is real or imagined. After the tour bus takes a detour to the guide's village to find the closest doctor, the other tourists become jittery and anxious to leave the wounded passenger behind. But the tourists' paranoia — they are American, French and British — is in no way justified by the treatment they receive in the village, where the townspeople show them kindness or stay out of their way. Conversely, Amelia fully expects the authorities to come to her aid, but is treated like a criminal first and a person in distress second by the border guides who find her after her ordeal. In a particularly wrenching scene, a border cop of apparent Mexican descent cuffs her while ignoring her pleas for help, responding to her mostly Spanish pleas strictly in English.
Clearly, González Iñárritu knows his Weltschmerz, and he burrows deep into the existential loneliness of each character to create a kaleidoscope of cumulative human sadness and grief over the state of the world. With uncommon empathy and insight, he elicits moving performances from all the actors — down to the incidental detective who comes to talk to Chieko. The experience, followed by a chance encounter with her father, leaves him shaken, disoriented and hitting the nearest bar — by then you know exactly how he feels.
García Bernal, in a smaller role as Santiago, Amelia's funny, loose cannon of a nephew, is as charming as he is unnerving and tragic. When little Mike, strapped in the back seat en route to the wedding, remarks that his mother says Mexico is dangerous, Santiago turns to him with a mischievous grin and says, "It is. It's full of Mexicans." Young, feisty, prone to trouble and uncommonly perceptive, Santiago, Chieko and Yussef chafe at the arbitrary constraints imposed on their lives by others. The limitations feel like a prison. And for Yussef and Santiago, they very likely become one.
By Carina Chocano
CLICK HERE - Trailer of 'Babel'
*see the trailer after the short CF
Babel (M18)
2 Hours and 23 mins
Cast by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal,
Rinko Kikuchi, Adriana Barraza
Babel
Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Paramount Vantage 10/07 Feature Film
Babel focuses on four families in four countries on three continents in a multidimensional story that engages the senses, startles the mind, and engenders within our consciousness an appreciation for small acts of kindness and compassion in a world filled with hatred, violence, confusion, dread, suffering and loss. This extraordinary film is the third in a trilogy by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu that includes with Amores Perros and 21 Grams.
People today are cut off from each other by race, language, culture, and tradition. Although the mass media and the Internet claim to be uniting us, the separations are more egregious now than ever before. Ideas about who belongs in our communities, coupled with prejudice against outsiders, strangers, and foreigners, make us feel ill-at-ease wherever we are. We cluster in small units of family and community while eschewing religious allegiance to the human family. We emphasize differences rather than celebrate commonalities. The Babel of the Bible is nothing compared to the many forms of Babel in our time. Babel exists wherever people are at each other's throats or stuck in situations that bring out their fear, anger, hatred, or violent behavior.
Inarritu and screenplay writer Guillermo Arriaga plunge us into the suffering, trials, and tribulations of people dealing with hardships that would test any soul. In a small village in the mountains of Morocco, a goat-herder purchases a rifle from a neighbor, who had received it as a gift after serving as a guide for a Japanese hunter. The herder tries the weapon out with his two young sons and then gives it to them with orders to shoot some of the jackals that are pestering the goats. Later the two boys decided to test the gun's range by firing at vehicles on a road below their fields. The younger boy shoots at a tourist bus, and it stops shortly afterwards. Someone has been hit.
Amelia (Adriana Barraza) has been the nanny for two young American children in southern California since they were born. Their parents are on a trip overseas when the time comes for her to go to Mexico to attend her son's wedding. Unable to find anyone to look after the kids, she decides to take them with her. Amelia's nephew Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal) volunteers to serve as her chauffeur. The wedding is a joyful occasion and even the children enjoy themselves. But as they are returning home, an aggressive guard at the border triggers Santiago's temper, creating a situation where Amelia and the children in her care are put in grave danger.
Back in Morocco, Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett), the parents of the California kids, are not having a good time. They have gone on the trip to heal their grief over the death of their third child as an infant. Susan feels uncomfortable in this desolate country; at a restaurant she throws away some water her husband is about to drink, sure that it is contaminated. On the bus, she rests her head against the window and then is shot in the shoulder. Everyone on the bus thinks they are being attacked by terrorists.
With no hospitals nearby, the driver takes them to his village where a veterinarian stitches up Susan's wound and an old lady nurses her. A very kind and hospitable Muslim gives them shelter. He is calm presence in a situation which has aroused Richard to a state of panicked helplessness. The situation grows more tense when the other tourists, fearing for their lives, take the bus and leave them behind.
In Tokyo, Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), a deaf-mute student, loses a volleyball game for her team due to her anger at an unfair call by the referee. She is a very troubled adolescent, who expressing her rage through unrestrained sexual behavior. At a restaurant, she removes her panties in the lavatory and, making sure a young man at a nearby table is looking at her, flashes him a view of her crotch. Later, she and her best friend do pills and drink whiskey with some boys who take them to a disco. Chieko tries to lose herself in the place but is unable to do so. She returns to her sexual aggressiveness with a dentist who orders her out of his office. Chieko goes home and has an encounter with a stranger that proves to be somewhat surprising and tender.
At Cannes Film Festival, Inarritu said in an interview: "I feel that the connection that I want to make is not a physical or coincidental connection, nor a plot connection. I think as human beings, what makes us happy is very different; it depends on cultures or races. What makes us sad and miserable is exactly what we share, and that thing is basically the impossibility of love, the impossibility to be touched by love, the impossibility to touch with love and express it. That is one of the most painful things that every human being has experienced, as well as feeling vulnerable to love. I think those two things are the most tragic things that bring us together. This film and the connections to the characters is about that, all of them on different levels, no matter which culture, no matter which country, religion, age, social class . . . All of these people are at an inability to express themselves, with their husbands, with their wives, with their kids. When you cannot be touched by words, and when you cannot touch people with words, then the body becomes a weapon, an invitation, and that is what is tremendous about the story. I feel that you saw a story about human beings and not about Moroccans, Mexicans, or Americans."
Babel is the kind of movie that you will want to see again. Repeated viewings give you a chance to explore the small moments of light and love and kindness and compassion that pass by in a flash. Also pay attention to both the flaws and the inner reserves of resiliency that are evident in these characters as they push against settings where they feel uncomfortable and stressed out.
Love is celebrated in all the world's religions as the most powerful and poignant emotion. Babel will give you access to the many shades of love as it shows what happens when it is ignored, squandered, or annihilated by anger, fear, hatred, and violence.
By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
********************************************************************
If a butterfly flaps its wings in the rain forest, it will, if nothing else, set off an infinite chain reaction in the minds of Alejandro González Iñárritu and his creative collaborator, Guillermo Arriaga. The director and screenwriter have a thing for causal connections, which, in "Babel," they literally track to the ends of the Earth.
As in "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams," their two previous collaborations, "Babel," which won the best director award at Cannes, ties together four seemingly unconnected stories that are eventually revealed to be inextricably linked to one another. The first story begins in the Moroccan desert, where a farmer named Abdullah (Mustapha Rachidi) buys a rifle to protect his goats from jackals, and hands it over to his two young sons, Yussef (Boubker Ait El Caid) and Ahmed (Said Tarchani), who, fooling around, take a careless potshot at a passing bus.
The second takes place in San Diego and later in a small Mexican border town, where Amelia (Adriana Barraza), a Mexican nanny, takes her young charges Mike (Nathan Gamble) and Debbie (Elle Fanning) to attend her son's wedding when their traveling parents refuse to let the woman take the day off. What at first seems like heartless authoritarianism on the part of her employer turns out to be the result of a tragedy. Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) are traveling in Morocco when their bus is attacked in what appears to be a terrorist incident.
As its title implies, "Babel" is about the difficulty of human communication, but although the stories unfold in four countries and in five languages — English, Arabic, Spanish, Japanese and sign — language is far from the principal barrier. Instead, the film explores the ways in which cultural assumptions and biases tend to obscure reality even when reality is plain, and the way our perceived differences keep us from finding a human connection to one other.
If the relationship among the first three stories — each gingerly perched on an explosive political issue — soon become apparent (Susan's freak accident is quickly spun into an international crisis; Amelia falls into an immigration quagmire when her drunk nephew, played by Gael García Bernal, provokes the border guards on their way home), the fourth story takes awhile to reveal itself.
Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), a deaf Japanese teenager whose mother has recently committed suicide, acts out her grief and feelings of isolation by throwing herself at every man or boy who crosses her path. She drifts through the crowded, pulsing streets of Tokyo, shot by cinematographer Rodrigo Pietro as though the city were a beautiful, whimsical contraption that appears even more startling and dreamlike when the sound drops out. Chieko's connection to the others is tenuous, but her experience provides the lyrical counterpoint to what are otherwise Kafkaesque tragedies about individuals swallowed up by the bureaucratic machinery of nationhood.
The beauty of this film is in its lapidary details, which sparkle with feeling and surprise. González Iñárritu and Arriaga, both Mexican (González Iñárritu now resides with his family in the United States), are particularly attuned to the vulnerability of the foreigner abroad — whether that vulnerability is real or imagined. After the tour bus takes a detour to the guide's village to find the closest doctor, the other tourists become jittery and anxious to leave the wounded passenger behind. But the tourists' paranoia — they are American, French and British — is in no way justified by the treatment they receive in the village, where the townspeople show them kindness or stay out of their way. Conversely, Amelia fully expects the authorities to come to her aid, but is treated like a criminal first and a person in distress second by the border guides who find her after her ordeal. In a particularly wrenching scene, a border cop of apparent Mexican descent cuffs her while ignoring her pleas for help, responding to her mostly Spanish pleas strictly in English.
Clearly, González Iñárritu knows his Weltschmerz, and he burrows deep into the existential loneliness of each character to create a kaleidoscope of cumulative human sadness and grief over the state of the world. With uncommon empathy and insight, he elicits moving performances from all the actors — down to the incidental detective who comes to talk to Chieko. The experience, followed by a chance encounter with her father, leaves him shaken, disoriented and hitting the nearest bar — by then you know exactly how he feels.
García Bernal, in a smaller role as Santiago, Amelia's funny, loose cannon of a nephew, is as charming as he is unnerving and tragic. When little Mike, strapped in the back seat en route to the wedding, remarks that his mother says Mexico is dangerous, Santiago turns to him with a mischievous grin and says, "It is. It's full of Mexicans." Young, feisty, prone to trouble and uncommonly perceptive, Santiago, Chieko and Yussef chafe at the arbitrary constraints imposed on their lives by others. The limitations feel like a prison. And for Yussef and Santiago, they very likely become one.
By Carina Chocano
CLICK HERE - Trailer of 'Babel'
*see the trailer after the short CF