Monday Movie Review: Babel

Babel (2006) 10/10
The accidental shooting of an American tourist (Cate Blanchett) touches the lives of a poor Moroccan family, a Mexican nanny (Adriana Barraza), and a deaf Japanese schoolgirl (Rinko Kikuchi). Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.

You will probably think I'm making this up, but I swear I read two or three different capsule descriptions of this movie and still had no idea what I was going to see. The biggest hint is that this is a Iñárritu movie; he's the guy who directed Amores Perros, which was also about a group of unconnected stories tied together by a single accident. Here, I think that the director has truly honed his skills. The stories flow back and forth from country to country without confusion, and the sense that they are tied together by an undercurrent of meaning is strong. The characters in Babel all long to reach through each moment of failed communication and somehow touch what they really want.

Nowhere is this more poignant than with Cheiko (Kikuchi), isolated by her deafness, she is far more isolated by grief at the death of her mother. More than anything, she wants to be an ordinary girl, but it's hard to flirt with boys when you can't hear them. She wants to be no different than her friends, but her grief isolates her. Her constant grasping for sexual contact is touching and sad. Kikuchi is brilliant in the role, although I think it's a real shame that they hired a hearing actress to play a deaf character.

The part you've seen on TV or in previews involves Richard (Brad Pitt) and the shooting of his wife Susan (Blanchett). The incident, and his desperate struggle to get help for her, is magnificently filmed; claustrophobic, terrifying, infuriating. Perfect, too, is the intimacy between them; they have come to Morrocco for time to heal their marriage, yet still have enough physical ease for him to help her onto a makeshift bedpan with no pretense at shyness.

Susan was shot accidentally by a shepherd's son who was target shooting, but soon the fear of terrorism has made the shooting an international incident, and the family is terrified. While police in Morrocco stand firm to the point of beating an elderly couple who may be connected to the rifle, they are exactly paralleled by immigration police on the Mexican-Canadian border. What is true about both sets of police is that doing their job prevents them from seeing the "Other" as human.

In Japan, a third police officer is forced to see the girl he questions as human in a poignant and lovely scene.

If all this sounds confusing, it isn't. You always know where you are and who you're dealing with. You always experience a powerful and authentic sense of place, something very important to me when I watch movies.

I was very pleased that, despite the drama, fear, and violence, Babel wasn't overblown. I feared I'd see a death or tragedy or horrible coincidence in every scene, but, while terrible things happened, I never felt like I was being bludgeoned. Perhaps just because it felt real in some crucial way.

(This cross-post doesn't have any clever text attached.)