Having recently watched Babel I would classify this movie as part of another in a long series of alienated laments modern directors are making about this so-called, "Post 9-11 world." I found it so boring, frustrating, and gratingly tedious that I eventually turned it off and only barely made it through on the second try.
Inarritu (forgive the incorrect punctuation, please) has chalked himself up as another director interested in the "everyday" trials and tribulations of modern-day human beings all around the world, creating a world in which untoward tragedies strike normal people and exploring the consequences of these people's reactions. In the end we are meant to believe that this movie and others like it ("Crash" comes to mind) offer an uplifting thought that, though things are complex and often terrible in our globalist reality, we are all latently connected and in this mess together. The problem with "Babel," (and "Crash" comes to mind here, too) is that the director at no point offers any relatable characters, settings or situations to allow the viewer to connect to the things happening on the screen. With Babel, I felt like a viewer in an aquarium, watching terrible things happen to people who I absolutely could not care less about. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett's characters are tragic on paper, with a disintegrating marriage thrown into relief by terrible circumstance. But they are both so one-dimensional as to make us completely unable to empathize with their troubles. There isn't a glimmer of personality between them, and no affection either, which makes us hate Cate Blanchett more than we long for the redemption of her marriage. And the Morroccan citizens they interact with neither bring something out of the American characters nor show something of their own dignity themselves, making the two tourists' predicament utterly sterile.
The other character's share a similar plight, leading personality-less lives that, in the end, cast their stories into cliché. And this is the ultimate point: without convincing or particular character, any scenario is a cliché, a fable, making Babel a collection of fables with a "message" so hollow and uninteresting I'd expect it in a junior-high English paper before a feature film.
As a result this movie strikes me as a very dull and frankly sophomoric lament about modern alienation. It has nothing new, convincing, or specific to say. Combine this with repetitive and sometimes even action-less unfolding of the plot which hammers the movie's purpose into your head, and we have a movie experience with no gratification.
All-in-all, I'd like my money back.
See also, "Crash."
Inarritu (forgive the incorrect punctuation, please) has chalked himself up as another director interested in the "everyday" trials and tribulations of modern-day human beings all around the world, creating a world in which untoward tragedies strike normal people and exploring the consequences of these people's reactions. In the end we are meant to believe that this movie and others like it ("Crash" comes to mind) offer an uplifting thought that, though things are complex and often terrible in our globalist reality, we are all latently connected and in this mess together. The problem with "Babel," (and "Crash" comes to mind here, too) is that the director at no point offers any relatable characters, settings or situations to allow the viewer to connect to the things happening on the screen. With Babel, I felt like a viewer in an aquarium, watching terrible things happen to people who I absolutely could not care less about. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett's characters are tragic on paper, with a disintegrating marriage thrown into relief by terrible circumstance. But they are both so one-dimensional as to make us completely unable to empathize with their troubles. There isn't a glimmer of personality between them, and no affection either, which makes us hate Cate Blanchett more than we long for the redemption of her marriage. And the Morroccan citizens they interact with neither bring something out of the American characters nor show something of their own dignity themselves, making the two tourists' predicament utterly sterile.
The other character's share a similar plight, leading personality-less lives that, in the end, cast their stories into cliché. And this is the ultimate point: without convincing or particular character, any scenario is a cliché, a fable, making Babel a collection of fables with a "message" so hollow and uninteresting I'd expect it in a junior-high English paper before a feature film.
As a result this movie strikes me as a very dull and frankly sophomoric lament about modern alienation. It has nothing new, convincing, or specific to say. Combine this with repetitive and sometimes even action-less unfolding of the plot which hammers the movie's purpose into your head, and we have a movie experience with no gratification.
All-in-all, I'd like my money back.
See also, "Crash."