Synopsis
If You Want to be Understood...Listen
Tragedy strikes a married couple on vacation in the Moroccan desert, touching off an interlocking story involving four different families.
2006 Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
Tragedy strikes a married couple on vacation in the Moroccan desert, touching off an interlocking story involving four different families.
Brad Pitt Cate Blanchett Gael García Bernal Adriana Barraza Rinko Kikuchi Koji Yakusho Satoshi Nikaido Harriet Walter Michael Maloney Dermot Crowley Peter Wight Elle Fanning Trevor Martin Aaron D. Spears Alex Jennings Mohamed Akhzam Matyelok Gibbs Claudine Acs Michael Peña Jamie McBride Clifton Collins Jr. Mónica del Carmen Nathan Gamble André Oumansky Wendy Nottingham Linda Broughton Lynsey Beauchamp Aline Mowat Michel Dubois Show All…
巴别塔, 火線交錯, Вавилон, 바벨
Politics and human rights Moving relationship stories emotional, emotion, family, moving or feelings racism, african american, powerful, hatred or slavery religion, church, faith, beliefs or spiritual emotion, emotional, moving, feelings or sadness family, emotional, emotion, touching or kids Show All…
From the director of Amores Perros & 21 Grams, Babel is the third & final chapter of Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu's Trilogy of Death which once again employs the multiple-narratives structure interconnected by a single event, further explores the prevalent themes of the last two chapters while adding a few more & features captivating performances from its much more diverse cast to finish the trilogy on an admirable note.
Set in 3 different countries & interweaving 4 distinct plot lines, the story of Babel is triggered by a rifle bought by a Moroccan herder whose sons, while testing it, end up wounding an American woman who was vacationing there with her husband. When the two are unable to return home on time, their children's caretaker…
A film about language and communication would normally grab my interest immediately. For the better part of this film the sheer quality and topics of most of the separate stories managed to do just that. There is enough to enjoy here, with strong performances and interesting subjects.
It is, however, also infuriatingly moronic in its contrived and forced narrative link. It makes a capital mistake in that it feels the incessant need to 'mean something'. It does so by force feeding us a link that is supposed to give the separate stories a common meaning/purpose. What it fails to recognise is that the stories by themselves manage to bring across the commonality just fine, keeping the uniqueness of their narrative and clearly distinct feel.
It is extremely annoying that in its attempt to please its audience and naive need to tie up loose ends it fails to see the quality that is already there.
Babel:
- A bunch of stories that intertwine
- Great acting
- Great directing
- Writing is precise and smooth
- The script makes people sound like real people
- Works well as an ensemble piece
Crash:
- A bunch of stories that intertwine
- Fine acting
- Horrible directing
- Writing is messy and doesn’t make sense
- The script is blatantly racist and no one sounds like a real person
- Does not work well as an ensemble piece
Pretty sure you get the point
What a load of wank. Babel adds up to nothing. Stuff happens, but nothing really happens, and it all means nothing. I would have called it pretentious wank but it's so empty I don't even think it's trying to say something.
Alejandro González Iñárritu is a technical master as a director, but that simply isn't enough. His stripped back debut, Amores Perros, is easily his best work that I've seen. Yet in Babel his wizardry serves no purpose. The entire structure is artificial, and not in a way that adds value since it's meant to be a film of simple humanity. There's two great set pieces, one at a US-Mexico border crossing and another when a group of Japanese teenagers…
Well over two hours of tedious misery porn all for some surface level message about communication. Attempts to go against the tourist or 'othering' gaze but inevitably ends up playing up cultural stereotypes, particularly in the Japanese segment which had the most ridiculous and tenuous connection to the overarching plot, existing solely to drag this monotonous dreck out far longer than necessary.
iñárritu further proving himself 2 be the master of crafting obnoxious, contrived af pieces of white elephant art by making something straight out of the farhadi school of radical "empathy" (read: having every character act as unreasonable as possible under the guise of investigating the human condition, when it's just an excuse to progress rote drama) instead of trying to examine how these events are triggered from the failures of neo-liberal international institutions. but that would actually take some level of formal talent beyond "have people shouting and crying and play some sad music; humanism."
hi and welcome to the museum of movie kisses! our first exhibit is: the kiss brad pitt gives cate blanchett while she pees in a pan