by Rhian Hibner
Daily Lobo
"Babel" would have been more interesting if it had come out in 1994.
Unfortunately, even then, it still would have had "Pulp Fiction" to go up against, and it would have lost badly. "Babel," like "Pulp Fiction," has a story that is broken up into three parts, and much like that film, it is broken up in time as well as space.
The problem is, while Quentin Tarantino pulled this off quite nicely 12 years ago, Alejandro González I§árritu doesn't seem to have quite the same skill. A lot of this movie should have stayed on the cutting-room floor. Many scenes are purely gratuitous; this film is about an hour longer than it needs to be.
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Essentially, three main stories are being told. The first is about a man named Richard and his wife Susan, who is accidently shot while they are traveling through Morocco. Richard is played by Brad Pitt, who is looking particularly old in this role. Susan is played by Cate Blanchett who, in odd contrast to Pitt, is looking young as ever. On its own, this part of the movie would be completely coherent if it were not interspersed with the other two stories.
The second thread of the film involves Richard and Susan's children, who are at home in the United States being watched over by their Mexican nanny while their parents are abroad. The children, Mike and Debbie, find themselves whisked away on a rather unlikely journey into Tijuana, Mexico, so their nanny can go to her son's wedding. The entire plot thread seems completely contrived, with the children and their nanny at one point being stranded in the Sonoran Desert.
The third plot thread is more believable, but at the same time has almost nothing to do with the rest of the movie. This plot revolves around deaf-mute Japanese girl, Chieko, who is feeling abandoned in the wake of her mother's suicide. Chieko, played by Rinko Kikuchi, is a complete emotional wreck who spends most of her screen time behaving rather badly. This entire segment of the film has nothing to do with the other two parts. The only connection is that Chieko's father once owned the gun that was later used to shoot Susan in the movie's main plot thread.
It's pretty clear that I§árritu had a certain goal in mind. He seems to be playing off the difficulties in translation between sets of people and how this leads to people misunderstanding each other. This is a fine and noble goal, but other movies have covered this subject better. The idea of using nonsequential storyboarding is also a perfectly acceptable method of filmmaking, but others have already mastered this format and moved on. In essence, one ends up with a movie that tries hard to be many things and manages to fail to be any of them.
