BABEL

PARAMOUNT

RELEASED 19 January 2007

‘Babel’ director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu gave us 2003’s harrowing tale of death and loss in ‘21 Grams’, and the ‘Babel’ screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga wrote one of the films of 2004 (‘The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada’) so I looked forward to this one eagerly.

Richard and Susan (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) are vacationing in Morocco; their two children are at home with their Mexican maid, Amelia (Adriana Barraza). She departs for Mexico to attend her child’s wedding, with Richard and Susan’s children in tow. A local herdsman’s young sons (Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait El Caid) are given a rifle to hunt jackals. Seemingly unrelated, in Tokyo a widower (Koji Yakusho) attempts to deal with his raucous, promiscuous, deaf daughter (Rinko Kikuchi).Performances can’t be faulted, with Rinko Kikuchi as the deaf Japanese girl being a real standout (Brad Pitt is fine but it is a performance that requires him to look nothing more than permanently harrowed), and the script is always sharp and incisive. Stylishly filmed with some stunning sound design (the club scene actually felt like being in a nightclub), ‘Babel’ is a lesson in filmmaking. However, I came out feeling the film wasn’t really about anything. Coincidences and unlikely connections bind the four different storylines, but I didn’t know what the meaning of the film was. It seemed to step back from having an opinion on the difficult events shown, and I felt slightly conned. Definitely interesting, but not enough substance for me.

THREE OUT OF FIVE