In this great big world we're all alone and desperate for human touch. Even our most prevelant means of communication, speech, isn't able to convey that deep desire and help us accieve the connection we're looking for and blah blah blah.
If this wins Best Picture it will be for the same reason Crash won last year (although Crash is a much better movie, watch that instead). Something about the majority of academy voters crammed into that strange LA valley makes their brains receptive to this unnessicarly complicated story as all other awards ceremonies this year have proven. Not that it's a bad movie, it is an interesting, well performed, directed, and edited commentary on all of the ideas addressed above but you still walk away feeling a little bit confused as to why certain things were included to apparently enhance the story telling.
Babel presents the concept that no matter how innocent/young we may be, we all carry the pain of the scars of the world around us. What is actually a fairly simple and thought provoking plot is convoluted by some skipping around timeline issues, and that fact that pretty much the only reason the action is on three different contitnents is to enhance the concept of seperation between people who are essentially all same and that almost makes the execution feel gimmicky. It basically always feels like the film is trying to tackle too much at once, which just leads to confusion. Which I suppose is ironic in a movie about confusion caused by miscommunication, but not something you want to do to an audience.
I DID enjoy the concept of the Japanese daughter (whose personal scarring comes from witnessing her mother's gun inflicted suicide and now flashes her poonani at any passing stranger as a means find comfort) being deaf. For what ever reason, that aspect of dealing with communication spoke to me (no pun intended) more than the "look we're everywhere" stuff. And as the story unravels there seemed to be more and more situations that were implausible but written with the assumption that "it's just so weird it has to have happened."
I kind of wish I had made the effort to seen this one in the theater simply because, on my computer, I kept thinking I'd accidentally turned off my subtitle option and then messed around with it. I'm assuming in the theater there's a lot that's tranlated and a lot left open for an English speaking audiences interpretation. But I got nervous that perhaps I had shut off ALL subtitles in my fiddling, so I'd switch them on again and then EVERYTHING was subtitled.
There are some excellent moments when people's emotions are shot to incredible heights as a result of dealing with communication issues. In that respect the movie keeps with that theme quite well. But then you have the 10 minute Rolling on E sequence with the deaf Japanese girl that kind of made me long for the fast paced trippy secquences in Moulin Rouge! which related just as much information about 10 times faster.
The main reason to see this movie is the performances. Particularly Adriana Barraza as a Mexican nanny who has lived in America for 16 years and raised Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett's children since birth. Put in an impossible situation when Brad Pitt forces her to take care of the kids (when his sister in law isn't able to show up for some reason that's never explained) when she was supposed to go to her son's wedding in Mexico, she makes the choice to bring her two families together. Since Brad Pitt is a continent away, she decides to have her nephew drive her down for the day and then cart her and the ninos back. Of course there's issues getting back into America and her nephew jumps the border with the car, driving them out to the middle of nowhere and shoving them out into the desert. This fairly implausible plot devise aside, her performance as a mother, a woman, a caregiver, and a terrified immigrant meld together in a plotline that has far more heart than the other two stories.
I believed all the other performances and agree that Brad Pitt should probably have recieved more awards buzz than he's gotten. His performance was just as moving as Rinko Kikuchi as the deaf daughter and I just regret that HE wasn't the one flashing his junk all over the place. And this will get me crap from my friends who make fun of my appriciation for older guys but, Brad Pitt with gray hair and a beard...LORD...mmmm.
Other than the subtitle issue I mentioned above, this is probably a rental. Worth seeing but only after checking out Crash, 21 Grams, and Syriana. This really is a good movie, I know I've been tearing it down. But if it wins best picture on Monday, I'm going to be kind of bummed. And it will only have happened because people like to be artsy and think if they're walking away from something confused, that must mean it was REALLY good.
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