Babel

Babel – Listen

The movie Babel by Alejandro González Iñárritu was leant to me by a colleague who told me, “It’s a movie where nothing happens, you should like it”. It was quite a good summary. Babel tells four connected stories: two young shepherd brother see their live turned around when their father gives them a rifle, a young american couple see their live disrupted during a trip in Marocco because of a bullet of that riffle, the mexican woman that looks after their kids who wants to go to her son’s wedding and a japanese widow who has trouble with his deaf daughter. In each case, the core issue is communication or lack of thereof. While the movie is quite slow and it took me some time to get involved, it is very intense, in each case the life of the protagonist takes a dramatic turn.

I found the four stories uneven, I really liked the story of the two shepherds and the young deaf japanese. The first as very rough and pure characters and breathtaking backgrounds, the second is probably the most intriguing, seing Tōkyō’s nightlive from the perspective of a deaf is really fascinating. The drama of the american couple (Brad Pitt & Cate Blanchett) is intense and probably designed to involve the viewer, but I found it a little bit to predictable, to stereotypic. The story I liked least was the one happening in Mexico, I’m not sure why, I seemed longer, and shot differently, maybe because of Iñárritu’s relationship to the subject. I found there were more characters and that attention was spread between the woman and the kids she is taking care of. All the other stories are built around a key event and how it resolves, but in this case, it is more a chain of problems. Finally, the connection to the rest of movie feels artificial – that the kids have a dramatic moment at the same time as the parents – all the other stories are linked by a single object, the rifle.

In conclusion, a beautiful movie with a few slow parts.

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