Two Moroccan brothers (Boubker Ait El Caid and Said Tarchani) and their father (Mustapha Rachini) living in poverty. An American couple, Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett), on holiday there. Their Mexican nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza), taking the kids across the border with her nephew Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal). And a troubled deaf Japanese girl, Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), living in Tokyo with her father (Koji Yakusho) after her mother's recent suicide. A great tragedy is about to lock these disparate characters' tales together irrevocably.
The extraordinary Babel (2006) is the culmination of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Death Trilogy" after Amores Perros (2000) and 21 Grams (2003), and I think it should've swept the 2006 Oscars (it was nominated for seven but won just Best Original Score). I certainly prefer it over Inarritu's subsequent efforts, Biutiful (2010), Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (he won four Oscars combined for the last two). From a nobly ambitious concept he hatched with co-writer Guillermo Arriaga, covering three continents and four interlocking stories, Inarritu handles every scene here with profound empathy and intuition, his grasp on the visuals also never letting up; overall his achievement here is just admirable. It's also sensitively filmed and lucidly edited, and the screenplay offers characters who all feel fully developed and suitably placed. Thanks to Inarritu, they're also all well-played. My whole opinion on Pitt as an actor changed after this movie with his dynamite portrayal of the increasingly stressed Richard, Blanchett has little real action but makes Susan nonetheless graceful, non-professionals El Caid and Tarchani show promise (what became of them later?) and Barraza is quite moving. But it's Rinko Kikuchi who gives the greatest performance here; as Chieko's story takes her through all the ups and downs of young romance, familial reconciliation and Tokyo's nightlife, Kikuchi gradually and expertly releases the shattered little girl inside her. She will rip your heart out, throw it in a blender and hit the ON button.
It has been called pretentious and bloated, but I wouldn't listen to that if I were you. For me, Babel is an incredibly emotional study of how violence and tragedy can connect us, but also a sensuous, vibrant and philosophical meditation on how hope can do likewise. Genuinely masterful.
No comments:
Post a Comment