Babel Babble....

Alejandro González Iñárritu (Dir), Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael García Bernal, Koji Yakusho

I put it to you that this is one of the most overrated movies of the year. Far from being the towering achievement that its title implies, this kinda crumbled to pieces like the proverbial tower. I regard Iñárritu as the natural heir to Krzysztof Kieslowski in his ability to weave together divergent stories across space and time into a coherent whole, as in his excellent Amores Perros. I've found his last two attempts, however, to be rather disappointing. 21 Grams had nothing very interesting to say and was kinda pretentious, while Babel, despite seemingly bearing an important message about cultural miscommunication, is far from an entertaining movie. I can't say that I found anything in it that was appealing - the characters aren't compelling, the story isn't that interesting, the acting is average, and the conclusion is highly unsatisfying. Why is it, for example, that the white American couple end up OK (Cate Blanchett doesn't even need an amputation), but everyone else gets screwed over? Is this a comment on the way of the world? In fact, I spent much of the movie trying to decide whether there was any point to any of it. The three settings (Morocco, California/Mexico, Japan) don't fit that well together, and the Japanese section is particularly tenuous, if not wholly bizarre. Not even Iñárritu's usually excellent cinematography makes the trip worthwhile. Perhaps the one redeeming quality is Gustavo Santaolalla's score.

I sense there was a reason why men were sent to the corners of the earth speaking in different tongues, but I suspect it wasn't so they could make a movie about it.....