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Weekly Archive > DVD
of the Day > 03/02/07
Towers of Bleakness
by dennis sampson
Babel
Guillermo Arriaga
Based on an idea by Guillermo Arriaga and Alejandro González Iñárritu (latter also directed)
 
 
From the team behind Amores Perros and 21 Grams, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and director Alejandro González Iñárritu, Babel is yet another wrenching character study that seems to bite off more than it can chew. Sort of like Crash, but set on a global level, Babel is a film based entirely around the concept and often devastating effects of miscommunication. The movie tells four loosely related stories—an American couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) on vacation in Morocco faced with a lift-threatening crisis, the Moroccan farmer (Mustapha Rachidi) and his children responsible for said crisis, the American couple's illegal immigrant housekeeper/nanny (Adriana Barraza) taking her employers' two young children (Nathan Gamble and Elle Fanning) to her son's wedding in her native Mexico, and a Japanese deaf-mute girl (Rinko Kikuchi) who is desperately trying to connect to the world. Some of the film's set pieces are orchestrated effectively—the filmmakers, in this film and their others, excel at bringing high-stakes emotions and realism to situations at unexpected turns. The movie is packed with moments of great tension and sentiment—the Japanese girl yearning for the touch of another, the American husband begging his fellow tourists not to leave him and his wounded wife in a desolate town, the desperation of the Mexican nanny when she's left stranded with the children in her charge, and the Moroccan father watching helplessly as his son falls victim to the circumstances he inadvertently created. As in their past movies, the filmmakers are examining the sadness of the human condition. But unfortunately for all these great moments, the movie's parts don't add up to its whole. Several of the stories fall into a pattern of predictability that leaves little room for surprise. And despite a narrative that flows engagingly, there's an emptiness to the end of the film that seems to beg for more of a point. For a movie that has received ample critical attention—a Golden Globe for Best Picture, seven Academy Award nominations including Picture, Director and Screenplay—shockingly the only extra that Paramount Vantage has put on the DVD studio is the trailer.
Babel
Paramount Home Entertainment
Rated R; 143 min.
$29.99
Buy it now
Dennis Sampson is a commercial production coordinator and unproduced screenwriter. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his better half, Susan, and their dog Tripp.
Babel courtesy Paramount Home Entertainment
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