BABEL [2006] review

I have lived abroad now for 6.5 years. I have lived in places where there is essentially no English spoken and I do not speak the native language, yet occasionally need to communicate something important. This produces a feeling of a certain kind of helplessness you can’t know if you’ve never been somewhere that you can’t use your native language to communicate. You feel like you have no arms, no legs, like you are invisible. So when Alejandro González Iñárritu mutes the sound to show us what it’s like for a teenage deaf-mute Japanese girl, or when he shows us Brad Pitt frantically trying to save his wife’s life, one can get a sense of the frustration, of the unbeleivable frustration when people cannot even understand the words coming out of your mouth.

BABEL inter-cuts three storylines that have varying degrees of interconnectedness. Yes, this kind of storytelling device has been done many times in films past. BABEL does not do it more cleverly or even as cleverly as most, but makes up for it in the richness of each storyline, especially the ones following Chieko, a deaf-mute girl who cannot express herself in so many ways about very important things to her and the one following Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in Morocco. I did not find myself caring much about the two American children on a journey with the Mexican nanny into Mexico. In fact, I’d like to have seen that storyline greatly reduced, as the movie does run long.

Rinko Kikuchi, who plays Chieko, is note perfect in her performance. From my personal experience here, the brief glimpses into Tokyo life are quite accurate, although one establishing shot did not coordinate with the playground water fountain scene.

BABEL does seem a bit overly emotional most of the time, and most of the movie is spent watching characters in despair with little levity in between, but the emotional ride is a satisfying one, albeit not groundbreakingly so.

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