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Flick Clique
FILM: Babel
Ashwin Raghu
The trouble with movies that have multiple plot-lines playing out remotely, is that the viewer knows there’s a common theme or a binding thread, and unless he’s engaged enough by the individual stories, will sit back and wait for it. And when the thread between these stories sits only lightly in evidence, you question the build-up even more in retrospect.
Babel is a set of seemingly unconnected stories, each of which is set in a different part of the world (Yes, one of those). Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) are American tourists on a bus riding through a desert in Africa. We are also introduced to Chieko and her set of teenage friends in a city in Japan, a Moroccan family of five living in a village, and a Mexican nanny assigned to watch over two American children. The film switches between these fables randomly, as a rather cumbersome thread begins to reveal itself.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the director, tries to give each of his settings a mark of identity, a distinct character amidst its essential randomness. But the results are often unwieldy and a little forced. Attempts to capture the milieu of a Moroccan village, for instance, results in faux-authentic street shots of children running after a bus. Much of the movie had an air of self-importance about it, such as the many stretches filmed in photogenic slow-motion with heavy, intoning music.
The way the movie unfolds suggests it is always building up to a climactic moment, a moment that will shed light on and give a context to whatever we saw leading up to it. There are extended stretches in the film showing us teenagers in Japan meeting in malls, flirting and hanging out with friends. And stretches that show us two suburban American kids at home with their over-worked nanny (who, in case you’re wondering, is trying to get away so she can go to her son’s wedding across the California border in Mexico). In real life, these are everyday, banal happenings. On film, apart from conveying to us that these are random, ordinary people and something ominous is about to happen to their status quo, not enough is done with these scenes so that we begin to care about these characters and their situations.
Inarritu tries to use his everyday snapshots to illustrate a lofty human theme, but never quite pulls it off. In the process, Babel becomes rather like an anecdote that stakes too much on the weight of its punchline. The punchline, then, is put under pressure to enlighten the rest of what we have seen, to justify the movie, in a way. As the last shot fades, we see a dedication from the film-maker on the screen, a sort of moralistic reminder to the audience that Babel’s theme does indeed carry a serious message. Much like a vociferous lawyer in a courtroom, Babel overestimates the gravity of what it is saying, and how it is being said. This is a story, or a set of stories, that is threaded together awkwardly and heavily without having enough to back its weight.
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