A Rare Proper-ish Review, Littered With Crash Comparisons

Babel: A Really Good Film In There Somewhere
Babel is the movie Crash wanted to be, and which Paul Haggis (who I maintain contributed the last half-hour of Casino Royale only) could never write. But while its a more insightful and (no-shit) more subtle film than last year's winner of "Best Picture" at the Oscars and "Most Overrated" the second it was labelled "great" by anyone anywhere, and is helmed by a director who at least has somewhat of an idea of how to handle its subject matter, it has its problems.

I guess the whole web of life thing is getting real old real fast as it becomes a more frequently used device for filmmakers to try to "open our eyes," or perhaps damn us all, in the hope that by giving us a broad enough scope we might see "real life" in there somewhere and find the film important and relatable to the world around us. And it's a shame that Babel furthered that feeling for me when it was one less storyline away from nailing the approach. Magnolia nails it. Crash is at the other end of the spectrum, where the director thinks his audience will buy any number of coincidences and contrivances and eat up any message so long as its force-fed with a flavour-masking dollup of obviousness and a glass of bullshit to wash it all down.

Brad Pitt's Oscar clip

Babel's four storylines begin as follows. (1) An American couple holidaying in Morocco: wife is shot while riding a tour bus. A stray bullet? The work of bandits? Terrorists? They're too far from anyone that can really help so they stop off at some shit-hole third world village and Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt cry a lot. (2) A Moroccan family living out in the middle of nowhere, apparently, with some sheep or goats something. The kids are given a gun to shoot predators, and while playing around with it and testing its range, shoot at a car, and then a tour bus. Oooohhhhh. They hit someone. Who we later find out (but guess immediately anyway) is Cate Blanchett. I didn't ruin it. It's obvious, and it's close to the start. Plus if you've seen a trailer or TV spot you knew already. (3) Back at home, Blanchett/Pitt's kids are with their Mexican nanny. The nanny can't go to her son's wedding because she has to look after the kids. She goes anyway. Obviously, something will therefore go wrong and she will be found out, its just a matter of how much Haggis they throw at us along the way. (4) A deaf Japanese girl finds herself constantly rejected by those around her, and seeks attention.

Inarritu said (according to the booklet thing at the Rialto) that he began filming Babel as a film exploring the barriers between human beings but, through constant rewriting as filming progressed and as the locations they were shooting in continued to open his own eyes to the world around him, became a film about the things which bring us together. Like Crash, cultural barriers are certainly a key focus, but its not simply "everyone's a racist at heart." The Western tourists eager to flee the middle-of-nowhere Moroccon town and leave the wounded Blanchett and her husband to wait for help that may not even be coming are perfectly realistic characters driven by realistic motivations - fearing their surroundings, particularly if the shooting was a deliberate targetted attack, you can't really look at these people and judge them. They're fearful of this landscape. And why wouldn't they be: the first thing the public hears of the shooting is that the Americans are calling it a possible terrorist attack. Possible, sure, but only in the sense that anything's possible. The work of a bullet fired by a couple of kids on the edge of their farmlands, remember. But they have to mention "terrorism" as a possibility. That's the world we live in now, with the Western media's (outside perhaps the BBC) tendency to sensationalise (and American government and military's tendency to over-react) no doubt contributing to the divide between the Western world and the third-world as it becames a more foreign and fearful place. Inarritu draws attention to this; America's trigger-happy public assessment of a situation they as yet know nothing about is met with a cold reception from the Moroccan government, claiming to have largely eradicated terrorist cells in the country, frustrated no doubt to be simply thrown into the mix as another dangerous third-world country particularly given the inevitable damage to their image and, consequently, tourism industry. This political locking of horns sees Blanchett's shooting become a worldwide news event before help has even arrived. And that help's been held-up now too; the American helicopter's not getting clearence from the Moroccans because of the debacle. So yeah, she's lying there, bleeding away, while the Americans do their "rabble, rabble!" South Park thing. And I was sitting there thinking: that's so true.

But this movie isn't simply politically motivated. Like I say, there is a broader theme here and the Blanchett/Pitt story is just one angle from which it's approached.

The Japanese story seems quite far-removed at first, and indeed while many may look at this thread and ask "what's the point?" or "how does this connect", I would argue that this is part of the point. The story is connected in a way that could be looked at as almost being Crash-ridiculous; the gun used to shoot Blanchett and Pitt was sold to the boys' father by a guy who received it as a gift from a Japanese hunter he guided several years earlier. And yeah, that Japanese hunter is the father of the deaf girl who stars in the Japanese story. How dare this movie use a silly string of events to justify putting this story on screen, you ask? I hope you didn't, because many people have and they seem to be in the mindset that the connection is ridiculous just because it sounds like it should be. But the connection isn't the point. It's not as if the story at the other end is some other International crisis and that they're connected in such a way would be unlikely and ludicrous. It's Inarritu saying that this is just one of those things happening in some part of the world; this character could be that person connected in that way because that person could be anybody. It's a smaller-scope story, like that of the boys responsible for the shooting in Morocco. I feel the need to emphasise this because I've read the silly-connection criticism everywhere and it's frustratingly moronic.

The Japanese story, one not of cultural clashes but of a girl facing barriers within her own society, eventually emerges as perhaps the strongest element of the film, and is suitably chosen to end the film (in a fairly breathtaking way). As with the story of the boys responsible for the shooting, which as I say is quite straightforward storywise, I won't elaborate too much here because doing so would ruin a few things worth discovering for yourself.

It's not that the film shines throughout. You could pick weak points in any of these stories. But the weakest is undoubtedly the Mexico storyline, the one where the nanny takes the American kids with her to her son's wedding. Now we're fully into Crash territory. It's not simply that the story resembles Crash thematically, which it does (it still does it far better), it's just that now I too have to be critical of the connection here. Shortly after having his wife shot while on holiday, back home Pitt's kids end up involved in a rather eyebrow-raising police chase that seemed a tad what-the-fuck-ish, and soon find themselves wandering dehydrated through the desert, all setting-up for a tragic set of cirucmstances faced by the nanny with the film, in the process, being insightful. You've got to be shitting me. Thing is, I liked what they did with the story; but while the "point" was strong, the means of getting there really let this movie down. It seemed way too contrived that this happened too. But fortunately, I can therefore only label one quarter of this movie as such, whereas with Crash it was the entire thing. And there really are some strong points worth giving credit for too; the use of time for example is superb. We learn of what happens to Blanchett in the days after her shooting not simply by time-lapsing five days but by setting the Japanese story, playing out intercut with the others, five days later. And other stories are set a day or two apart too to provide different perspectives on events also, something the film does effectively.

I said before that this film was a decent pick at the Globes for Best Drama, and I suppose it is - it's far better than Crash, and that won the Oscar. But I should also add that I made that comment within the context of expectation. In other words, for an awards show they could have picked a lot worse. I don't think Babel is brilliant filmmaking. At times it is, certainly, but its one of those flawed films that could undoubtedly have been tighter. The good thing is that if you watch movies a lot (like I do) you let yourself subconciously give films a little bit of room to make mistakes without noticing them too much or letting them hinder your enjoyment - until, that is, said-film crosses the line (like many films do). Well, Babel doesn't really cross that line too often, so I could appreciate it for what it was and it gets a thumbs up from me. Certainly worth your time, unless you're dying of cancer and have like two weeks to live.