I wish I could tell you to just go read my review of 'Crash' but IMDb's 10-line rule prevents me from doing so. So here we go, then:
The stories are incredibly simplistic, with barely enough content to satisfy a 45 minute TV show father gives his kids a gun, they accidentally shoot somebody and are arrested by the police; a woman is shot and her husband waits for help to arrive; housekeeper takes kids to wedding in Mexico and gets lost in desert crossing back over the border; Japanese teenager wanders around Tokyo without underwear. That's it. Whatever complexity 'Babel' possesses is the result of the random intercutting of these stories, not from the individual stories themselves. The fact is that you could take three random Janet and John 'plots' and cut them together to provide the illusion of post-modern deconstructed complexity. It's the cinema equivalent of the Emperor's new clothes, and for some reason, every critic in town is happy to marvel at the new duds.
Like 'Crash', 'Babel' is an actor's movie. It gives them an opportunity to cry and rage and play vulnerable and desperate, which all involved do very well. Brad Pitt gets to pull a Charlize Theron and play 'ugly' for Oscar consideration - graying hair, bags under the eyes, and crow's-feet. The lengths some actors will go to for their art! But the emotional hysteria, which Inarritu cranks up to outrageous proportions, is allowed to replace character development. Few characters actions seem rational, many are completely irrational, and you don't feel any connection to their plight beyond the fleeting sympathy for a sad looking face.
But it's this kind of sappy, over-emotional, manipulative storytelling that the Academy loves to get behind. Actors love it because it features the kind of roles they'd all kill for. Director's love it for its liberal, multinational, lets-all-hold-hands theorizing. Producers love it because it reinforces their belief that foreign accents, playing 'ugly' and crying a lot wins awards.
Inarritu has a lot of talent, but it seems wasted on a self-indulgent and vaguely teenage-Goth-activist obsession with the cruelty and injustice of the world. It's a far better film than the risible nonsense that was 'Crash', but it falls a long way short of the praise being heaped on it by many critics.
Expect it to win, however, several Oscars.
The stories are incredibly simplistic, with barely enough content to satisfy a 45 minute TV show father gives his kids a gun, they accidentally shoot somebody and are arrested by the police; a woman is shot and her husband waits for help to arrive; housekeeper takes kids to wedding in Mexico and gets lost in desert crossing back over the border; Japanese teenager wanders around Tokyo without underwear. That's it. Whatever complexity 'Babel' possesses is the result of the random intercutting of these stories, not from the individual stories themselves. The fact is that you could take three random Janet and John 'plots' and cut them together to provide the illusion of post-modern deconstructed complexity. It's the cinema equivalent of the Emperor's new clothes, and for some reason, every critic in town is happy to marvel at the new duds.
Like 'Crash', 'Babel' is an actor's movie. It gives them an opportunity to cry and rage and play vulnerable and desperate, which all involved do very well. Brad Pitt gets to pull a Charlize Theron and play 'ugly' for Oscar consideration - graying hair, bags under the eyes, and crow's-feet. The lengths some actors will go to for their art! But the emotional hysteria, which Inarritu cranks up to outrageous proportions, is allowed to replace character development. Few characters actions seem rational, many are completely irrational, and you don't feel any connection to their plight beyond the fleeting sympathy for a sad looking face.
But it's this kind of sappy, over-emotional, manipulative storytelling that the Academy loves to get behind. Actors love it because it features the kind of roles they'd all kill for. Director's love it for its liberal, multinational, lets-all-hold-hands theorizing. Producers love it because it reinforces their belief that foreign accents, playing 'ugly' and crying a lot wins awards.
Inarritu has a lot of talent, but it seems wasted on a self-indulgent and vaguely teenage-Goth-activist obsession with the cruelty and injustice of the world. It's a far better film than the risible nonsense that was 'Crash', but it falls a long way short of the praise being heaped on it by many critics.
Expect it to win, however, several Oscars.