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In Reply to: Babel. posted by patrickU on October 29, 2010 at 03:43:43:
I've seen this many times and it always moves me. My review is as follows:"In the Book of Genesis, the story of Babel reveals how mankind's push to overachieve backfires, leading to the spread of divine confusion and spiritual pain. The biblical story has inspired many artists over the centuries and director Alejandro Iñárritu is certainly an artist. If there was any doubt of that before, he dispels it here. His vision is powerful, his actors perform magnificently and his story, despite flaws and risky subject matter, is accessible and even noble, if not rising to its spiritual inspiration. Iñárritu achieves riveting performances from his entire cast--from children and foreign actors never before seen in Hollywood to superstars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.
The film weaves tales of confusion, miscommunication, terror and alienation in Morocco, Tokyo, San Diego and Mexico. It begins as an arab father buys a rifle for his two sons to protect a goat herd from jackals. In a horrid test of target practice, the boys take aim at a bus winding on a mountain pass below. With dramatic camera work and haunting music that bring audiences into the characters' locales and psyches, Iñárritu creates a strong gravitational force that moves through an ultradramatic narrative. This force pulls all the more strongly in remote locations and with fist-clenching suspense that evolves with the character development.
The stories unfold in a nonlinear way as Iñárritu attempts to weave together the seemingly disconnected subplots. He valiantly attempts to link them together. Perhaps the strands should have been left separate and produced as different vignettes, each in a linear way, from beginning to end. But I admire Iñárritu for attempting to resolve a tricky narrative with so many unrelated characters. Whether he pulls it off is debatable, but his skill and vision is beyond doubt.
Alienation, pain and miscommunication are universal themes, common to all humanity. Babel captures these themes well and weaves adept, muscular stories around them. The film does not achieve absolute spirituality and timelessness, but the stories are handled with great care and artistic vision. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker than Iñárritu, these plot lines would have come unglued. The book of Genesis tells of mankind's push to build a city, a tower, reaching to the heavens. In the modern world, many of our cities have such towers. And Iñárritu's stories come to an end on one of these high risers, looking out over the lights of Tokyo at night.
Edits: 10/30/10
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Follow Ups
- agreed...here is my review - Jazz Inmate 18:11:08 10/30/10 (1)
- RE: agreed...here is my review - patrickU 02:37:09 10/31/10 (0)
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