Editor’s note: In this series, RedFence Sr. Writer and Filmmaker James Roland takes a tour of this year’s five Academy Award Nominations for Best Picture. His reactions will be posted on Mondays and Wednesdays leading up to the awards ceremony, Feb. 25.
Best Pictures Part Four: Babel
by James Roland
Babel is the third installment in a sort of trilogy from writer/director Alejandro González Iñárritu. His first film, Amores Perros, holds a spark of ingenuity (and possibly beginner’s luck) while the middle film, 21 Grams, meanders from one scene to another, weaving emotionally charged scenes into a jumbled, lifeless mess.
Babel is Iñárritu’s most mature piece, revealing a cinemagraphic eye for beauty that is unparalleled in the first two films. It weaves multiple story lines into one film, revealing random, fate-like connections late in the story. Each story takes place in a different country and highlights the specific cultural tensions that arise from language barriers and skin color.
Morocco
The central story begins when an American tourist named Susan (played with aging beauty and conviction by Cate Blanchett) is shot by a stray bullet while riding a tour bus through Morocco. Her husband Richard (Brad Pitt, in a surprisingly real performance complete with wind burned skin, grey hair and wrinkled face) spends the length of the movie trying to transport her to the nearest hospital. While this story has some genuine moments, certain details work to evaporate the tension. For instance, Susan’s wound is quickly patched by a veterinarian from a nearby village and the film is quick to show that the bullet missed her lungs and organs. She never loses consciousness and is able to talk and move throughout the entire movie, which leaves the audience wondering why exactly her husband is so adamant about not moving her to a hospital.
Japan
Meanwhile, in Japan, a completely separate story takes place. Only thinly connected by plot and characters, this stand-alone tale of adolescent angst and sexual frustration is the best in the film. It does not carry the heavy political baggage of the other two story lines; instead it delves into character rather than climate, showing the life of a deaf school girl named Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi).
Chieko is inept at reading lips and is unable to make friends outside of the deaf world. Suffering emotional destruction after the death of her mother and dealing with normal adolescent alienation from her father, Chieko reacts violently to the schoolgirl taunts about her virginity. She begins to search frantically for sex and emotional connection with men; she seduces her dentist, takes drugs and drinks whiskey with boys she meets in the street, and strips herself down naked for the police officer she believes is there to investigate her mother’s death. The ending to her story is surprisingly original in its subtlety, and Iñárritu wisely uses it to end the entire film.
Mexico/America
The weakest story line takes place on the border between California and Mexico. Richard and Susan’s children are being watched by their house keeper Amelia (Adriana Barazza). Barazza, a veteran of Amores Perros, gives the best performance in the film. She is a woman torn between two worlds, living and working illegally in America to help support her extensive family in Mexico. When she is unable to find a replacement to watch the two children, she takes them with her into Mexico.
From the first scenes where the two children, Debbie and Mike, are carted off into Mexico by Santiago, who sports a child molester’s goatee and blares mariachi music from his beat-up car, it’s obvious that the children are out of place and destined for danger. But in a film about the tragedy of modern cultural relations, it’s a shame that Santiago gets drunk, fires a weapon, abandons his aunt and two small children in the desert, and generally lives up to all the modern stereotypes of the untrustworthy Mexican male.
At the end of the film, when Amelia faces deportation for taking the children across the border, she cries while a cold, callous police officer lists the charges against her. But I was shocked to discover that, as an audience member, I sided with the police officer rather than the sweet, old woman. She chose to live illegally in America, was divided between the interests of two countries, and in the end chose her homeland over the country that pays her wages and gives her shelter, all while endangering and almost killing two innocent children. Despite Barazza’s amazing performance, it’s hard to feel any emotion for Amelia in the end; she is weak and panicky and just plain wrong.
Despite the fact that it masquerades as a political statement, Babel really wants to be an interpersonal drama. Richard and Susan are forced to cling to each other for support, and therefore save their marriage. Chieko breaks down and reconnects with her father, returning to family for strength. This is easily the finest scene in the film; Iñárritu manages to desexualize Cheiko’s nudity, a tool she has used for destructive seduction through the entire film.
As a whole, Babel is adequate but hardly deserves its Oscar nomination. Despite the even flow and relative coherency of the intertwining stories, the film fails on a personal level because it loses focus of its real strength: family.
