Here miscommunication, there miscommunication, everywhere miscommunication. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros) and written by Guillermo Arriaga (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada), Babel is, at its core, a film about miscommunication and the consequences, usually negative that follows. Miscommunication isn't just due to language difficulties, to being a foreigner in a strange land (or, if you prefer, a stranger in a strange land), but, almost as importantly, to the cultural differences, the preconceived ideas, and social stigmas that impact almost every interaction, small and large, between individuals and between cultures. Alas, Babel doesn't matched Iñárritu and Arriaga's thematic and dramatic ambitions. It comes close, but due to the usual unevenness evident in their previous collaborations, Babel is, at best, a flawed, perhaps even a seriously flawed, film that at least still works at an emotional level (and for some moviegoers, that just might be enough).
Here we are again. Like 21 Grams and Amores Perros), Babel isn't one storyline, but three overlapping, interlocking stories, one set in the United States-Mexico, the other one set in Morocco, and the third in Japan, each told in fits and starts, flashing forward and backwards toward a singular event and its consequences, the accidental shooting of an American tourist, Susan (Cate Blanchett), in Morocco. Stranded in the mountains, with medical care hours away, Susan's husband, Richard (Brad Pitt), tries desperately to get help, any help. The American government claims the shooting wasn't accidental, but the work of terrorists, Offscreen a diplomatic standoff slows the arrival of any help. The other Western tourists, fearful for their lives and missing the usual comforts of home, attempt to convince Richard to let them go.
In the United States, a Mexican nanny, Amelia (Adriana Barraza), faces a dilemma. With their parents away on vacation, there's no one else to take care of Debbie (Elle Fanning) and Mike (Nathan Gamble), the children in her charge. Her son, however, is about to get married in Mexico. Desperate to see her son married, but torn by duty and responsibility toward the children, she makes the problematic decision to take them with her to Mexico. With her freewheeling, hot-tempered nephew, Santiago (Gael García Bernal), as her driver, Amelia and the children set off for Mexico. Crossing the border into Mexico, however, proves easier than crossing back into the United States.
In Japan, the deaf and mute Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) finds herself alone and alienated. Still recovering from the death of her mother, she hungers for emotional and physical intimacy, seeking it where rejection and heartbreak seem the most likely outcome. Over the course of a day and night, Chieko plays volleyball, loses her temper, gets thrown out, meets up with her befuddled father, Yasujiro (Kôji Yakusho), then checks in with her friends, makes a dental appointment, goes homes, watches television (where she clicks through the news about the shooting in Morocco), and goes out for an evening filled with seemingly limitless possibilities (she goes to a nightclub, where she joins the dancers by mimicking their movements), only to find herself as alone and alienated as she began.
Babel is at its strongest when it focuses on or returns to the Morocco storyline, at its weakest in the U.S.-Mexico storyline. The Morocco storyline is Iñárritu and Arriaga at their best, concise, direct storytelling, with an admirable sparseness of dialogue. A childish exercise in one-upmanship, a test of physical ability turns deadly, with dire consequences for a poor, disenfranchised family and the surrounding community, as Richard and Susan find the opposite, hospitality and compassion in their Muslim hosts. Despite the often harrowing scenes of Susan in extreme pain and Richard powerless to help her, the renewed connection between them, as well as the cautious optimism Iñárritu and Arriaga end the storyline makes it the most emotionally moving of the three storylines. And it doesn't hurt to have Cate Blanchett, as luminous as always, and Brad Pitt, looking older, more weathered than ever, as the co-leads for this storyline. Both give emotionally authentic performances, a testament to their talent and Iñárritu's abilities as a director.
Babel is at its weakest when it switches over to the U.S.-Mexico storyline, due less to Iñárritu and Arriaga's examination of cultural differences as seen through the (mostly) non-judgmental eyes of the two children, and due primarily to their overemphatic approach to the plight and the mistreatment of Mexican-Americans, legal and illegal, into a storyline involving not just one "bad" decision, but a series of bad decisions, each one less logical and more desperate than the last. At least in the Morocco storyline, Iñárritu and Arriaga focus on a single bad decision made by children and its aftermath. Here, they want us to believe that Amelia, a resident of the United States for sixteen years would blissfully jeopardize her status as the children's caretaker and her status in the United States. Worse Iñárritu and Arriaga rely on the children in jeopardy device feels unnecessarily manipulative (because it is).
For the third storyline set in Japan, Iñárritu and Arriaga go for a more metaphorical, oblique approach to the miscommunication or lack of communication theme. Although the storyline feels more tangential and inconsequential (since life-and-death or livelihood aren't at stake), it's also the least polemical or political. Shorn of statements about U.S.-Middle East relations, terrorism, or the U.S.-Mexico sociopolitical divide and the effects on individuals, Iñárritu and Arriaga prefer to focus on one character, her loneliness and alienation, and what it means to be deaf and mute in a homogenous, hierarchical society. Given the subtle examination of the themes involved and Rinko Kikuchi's poignant performance, that it doesn't quite fit in with the other storylines is forgivable, at least until the last scene, where Iñárritu and Arriaga's decision to layer in a psychosexual subtext proves to be jarring.
Like Iñárritu and Arriaga's previous collaborations, Amores Perros and 21 Grams, Babel certainly deserves a measure of respect, if not outright admiration. Like their previous collaborations, however, Babel is also uneven dramatically and thematically. While it doesn't collapse under the weight of its pretensions as 21 Grams did, it also doesn't offer three equally strong storylines. Instead, we get three storylines of varying distinction, merit, and poignancy. Given that Iñárritu and Arriaga have gone down this road three successive times, perhaps it's time for them to retire the interlocking, overlapping plot device, strip back their pretensions, and settle for a single storyline compellingly told.
© Mel Valentin, 3rd November, 2006
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