Review of Babel (2006) by Joshc — 04 Jan 2007

I don't want to be dragged into a Babel beat-down, but why not? With all the enthusiasm being dumped on it, the film can withstand a kick to the crotch, particularly since, as far as I can tell, it has no balls.

A good friend of mine once wrote that movies should never be good for you. And that is what nags me about Babel. Unlike anything in David Lynch's Inland Empire or Melville's Army of Shadows or whoever else you would accuse of pretentiously aestheticizing anomie or pleasurelessness, Iñárritu seems to want his movies to be good for you on those same terms.

Babel demands to be taken as more than a mere movie, as more than an entertainment. It's a big vitamin you can get at Whole Foods, near the yoga mats. At some point on their getaway from their parental misery (who escapes from the blues to that part of Morocco, anyway?), Cate Blanchett asks Brad Pitt why they're here.

And all you can think is, you poor Hollywood actress, you're in Babel where you and some other less famous people will be written into one massive implausibility after the next. But you'll all suffer for a worthy cause: the audience's enlightenment.

Cue the harps. This is a movie that people leave under the impression that something amazing has happened, that they've seen a high cinematic work, when all they've gotten is a flu shot. Last year, there were many more emotionally chilling manipulations that pull their strings without all the noise and blubbering and trashy entrapment of its characters.

I mean, really, having the maid, good as Adriana Barraza is in the movie, doing all that grotesque desert drifting? The movie is shameless. The Mexican maid is devoted to her employers and their children at the expense of every ounce of her common sense.

She has to be stupid and suffer so we can see/feel/know the full extent of how terribly illegal immigrants are treated. Barraza dragged to every station of the sociopolitical cross.