I saw the movie Babel last night. I had really liked Amores Perros but had gotten impatient with 21 grams. I also lost some of my patience watching Babel, especially towards the end when every story line climbs to a crescendo of tears and despair. Blork and I were talking about the movie afterwards (he liked it) and I couldn’t quite find the words to explain what was bothering me about the film. I felt like each storyline, even though very simple, could have been interesting in and of itself, but that putting them together made them lose their interest.
I always like to read reviews after I see a movie instead of before. This review I found in Salon expressed, better than I could, part of my reaction to Babel:
I guess that’s the point: Our actions may have consequences we can’t imagine, halfway around the world; when a butterfly bats its wings a baby is born, and all that. OK, but in the case of « Babel » what that produces is two powerful and intriguing mini-films whose only connection to each other is a third one that’s barely half as good.
My own reluctant conclusion, after three films of González Iñárritu’s career, is that he’s a brilliant, intuitive director who’s also kind of an intellectual lightweight. That’s no crime when it comes to filmmaking; nobody ever accused Scorsese or Fellini or Hitchcock of philosophical profundity either. I hate to criticize anybody for artistic ambition, but the problem with « Babel » isn’t that it’s a bad movie. It’s a good movie, or, more accurately, it’s several pieces of good movie, chopped up in service of a pretentious, portentous and slightly silly artistic vision.
Of course, this doesn’t take anything away from the great performances of Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi.