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Film review by Colin Fraser

BABEL
Babel
Several seemingly disconnected stories tell a gloabl tale of fear, anxiety and grief from Morocco to Mexico and Japan. score

5
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5 (unmissable) to 1 (unwatchable)
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Cast
Cate Blanchette, Brad Pitt, Koji Yakusho, Adriana Brazza, Gael Garcia Bernal

Director

Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu

Screenwriter
Guillermo Arriaga,
Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu

Country
USA

Rating / Running Time
MA / 141 minutes

Australian Release
December 2006

Official Site


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This ambitious tale of suffering takes its cue from the Biblical tower that visited confusion on Earth. Inarritu’s trilogy concludes with an epic production that teases out human frailty and despair in the 21st century. His now familiar construct of crossing narratives, characters and timelines builds a traumatic emotional drama built on the carelessness of seemingly unrelated incidents.

An American tourist (Blanchette at her most refined) falls victim when a rifle drops into the foolish hands of a Moroccan goat-herder. Critically wounded, she and her husband (Pitt’s strongest performance to date) are stranded in the desert as politics rage around them. Back home their children are safe until a Mexican carer takes them south for her son’s wedding. In Japan a deaf-mute adolescent is struggling with the recent suicide of her mother. Anxiety has gone global.

The apparent disconnection of these stories, revealed in a jagged frame, create a butterfly effect that gets to the heart of grief, loss and confusion. Big themes in a reduced world where hot terror and cold modernity have come to shape our lives. As frightful events pile up largely for want of a strong head, fear and discord take wondrous shape. As you might expect from the makers of Amores Perros and 21 Grams, Babel is a truly harrowing experience. Distinguished by formidable talent at every level, this is an extraordinary and quite astonishing triumph. If justice prevails, it will garner plaudits well beyond the Best Director award Inarritu won at Cannes this year. Foremost Babel is a stark yet simple assertion that, like those who dared challenge Heaven, divided we fall.

// COLIN FRASER