Babel (2006)
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Tragedy strikes a married couple vacationing in the Moroccan desert, which jumpstarts an interlocking story involving four different families.
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11 films that influenced Babel
What critics say influenced Babel
Their main topic here is the lack of communication that exists between people, a concept already beautifully deconstructed by Robert Altman in his 1993 gem Short Cuts.
This fourth strand seemingly doesn�t have the Magnolia/Crash/Short Cuts-like connection to the other three, but its not just family trees and coincidental correlations.
Grand Canyon, Magnolia, Happiness and Short Cuts all pulled this "Six Degrees of Separation" style of melodrama off without a hitch.
I'm thinking of "Short Cuts," "Pulp Fiction," "Magnolia," "Traffic," "Syriana" and Michael Haneke's "Code: Unknown" -- though admittedly the reactionary "Crash" gives the lie to any such fallacy.
If the film is to be compared to anything outside of Iñárritu's filmography, it might more profitably be compared to Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (2005), which it more resembles.
His interlocking structure and sociopolitical agenda recall films like Traffic and Syriana, but where the Soderbergh touch is supercool, Inarritu’s movies are sweaty from exertion.
Anyone who appreciates the intricate work of Steven Gaghan (“Traffic,” “Syriana”) or last year’s “Crash” should find enough strong moments in at least two or three of the individual stories to keep them riveted, but they’ll find even more depth in the way the stories are layered to give the viewer many options on how the puzzle can be assembled and what it all means once it’s done.
In fact, his episodic ode on ironic connections in a world of increasing mobility builds on the foundation of "Syriana" but is more a chain than a tower.
“Babel” will undoubtedly draw comparisons to “ Crash ,” what with its connect-the-dots storytelling and in-your-face social commentary, but the film is actually a lot more like last year’s politically-charged globetrotter, “ Syriana .”
It has its roots in farce comedy and its multi-story structure built on one act or item isn't essentially different from Julien Duvivier's portmanteau film Tales of Manhattan (1942), which follows the fate of a tail-coat from its creation by a tailor to its final days as the outfit on a scarecrow.
The titular reference made by Babel, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's maddening final installment in his so-called "death trilogy" (along with Amores Perros and 21 Grams), is a grand one, though the film itself gives only passing attention to its supposed inspiration.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (who worked together on Amores Perros and 21 Grams) have intentionally named their new film Babel; it’s a tip-off that the failure to communicate is the story’s dominant theme.
At the helm is caliente Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose masterful Amores Perros and spiritual 21 Grams were just as intricate, just as heavy and just as technically bold.
"Babel" is the third in a series of films - which started with Amores Perros and "21 Grams" - from the team of director Alejandro González Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga.
Working in one of the few media that resist geographic and cultural borders, Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) have woven together four disparate, interrelated stories amidst this overarching theme and in doing so have crafted an eloquent and electrifying depiction of mankind's increasingly fractured state, where small acts of kindness are freighted with unpredictable and often disastrous repercussions and desperate hours are never more than minutes away.
Big question: Can writer Guillermo Arriaga and director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu deliver a complex, chronologically jumbled film as gripping and well-acted as their last collaboration, "21 Grams"?
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His interlocking structure and sociopolitical agenda recall films like Traffic and Syriana, but where the Soderbergh touch is supercool, Inarritu’s movies are sweaty from exertion.
Thousands of miles away, their Mexican housekeeper Amelia (Adriana Barraza, "Amores perros") makes a bad decision that will endanger their children and change her life forever.
Babel is so similar in tone, style, and narrative gimmickry to his first two movies, Amores Perros and 21 Grams , that if you'd seen those two and didn't know he directed the third, you'd be able to guess it immediately.
The tragedy of modern Iraq is never mentioned in this superb new film but I'm sure that's one of the things on the minds of the filmmakers, the same Mexican writer and director team behind Amores Perros and 21 Grams.
But it's also worthwhile to compare it to Iñárritu's first two films, which were similarly convoluted—the critically acclaimed Amores Perros and his first American effort, 21 Grams .
At the helm is caliente Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose masterful Amores Perros and spiritual 21 Grams were just as intricate, just as heavy and just as technically bold.
AN AWARD WINNER at Cannes and an early favorite for Oscar enshrinement, Babel arrives courtesy of director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga, the same team that previously gave us 21 Grams and Amores Perros.
Seemingly incongruously, we also go to Japan and meet a deaf-mute high-school girl (Rinko Kikuchi) who responds to her mother's suicide with the worst case of Japanese sexual acting-out since In the Realm of the Senses.
Like "Traffic" and "Pulp Fiction" before it, the film jumps from locale to locale, slowly forming a story from its many parts.
(This film's interlocking chronologies are nearly as complicated as those of "Memento" or "Pulp Fiction," but they're elegantly handled.
I'm thinking of "Short Cuts," "Pulp Fiction," "Magnolia," "Traffic," "Syriana" and Michael Haneke's "Code: Unknown" -- though admittedly the reactionary "Crash" gives the lie to any such fallacy.
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She will have to stay with Mike (Nathan Gamble) and Debbie (Elle Fanning, "Because of Winn-Dixie"), the couple's children.
And what could that story have in common with a story about an illegal immigrant housekeeper (Adriana Barraza, Amores Perros) taking two American kids (Elle Fanning, Because of Winn-Dixie, and newcomer Nathan Gamble) across the border into Mexico in order to be at her son's wedding?
The comparisons that have been made to Paul Haggis' Crash (2005) are hardly worth discussing.
2005's Crash came off as more of a comedy than a work of art, but it did have its entertaining moments.