Babel
Whoa! This one is a hard one! With huge handfuls of award nominations and reviews from damning to effusive, whatever you say about this film is likely to upset someone. Certain points were clear to me and certain things I liked and disliked. It is definitely a contrived film with storylines written to convey messages about our inability to communicate effectively. As most things in the film it both serves the film and works against it. Gonzalez Iñarritu is a great constructor of images and of dramatic scenes which at times become almost overly graphic. Did I like the three stories aspect? Yes and no. At times it seemed that leaving one story to focus on another was unfair. The Japanese story could have been told on its own as it had far less in common than the others and I actually enjoyed it more. Rinku Kikuchi is a great find in a very difficult role as the deaf mute. 
The link between her father’s gun and the mayhem in Morocco is purely symbolic and unnecessary. Not many people mention it – a few on blogs do – and that is that apart from the issue of communication, there is another theme in the movie. The issue of stupidity! It is a little blunt to mention it but the dramatic tension of the movie is partly built on the fact that people make stupid decisions. The maid’s decision to take her charges out of the US without their parent’s approval and without her own papers in order is stupidity and nearly every other action taken on the fateful return is stupid. Fair enough, we take wrong decisions in moments of crisis but is this a good base on which to construct a message to learn from? 
Stupidity is also present in the Moroccan part – the parent letting his boys use a gun that is clearly too much for them and then the stupidity of the governments which prevents an early resolution of the problem with the injured wife. Selfishness goes hand in hand with this and it is amazing to see that none of the passengers has any concern for the injured woman. This stretching to extremes by the director and writer undermines their credibility in parts. Brad Pitt, 
Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal all do good work in their roles and as the maid Adriana Barraza is fine. Rodrigo Prieto’s photography is very beautiful in a slightly cliched way, Gustavo Santaollala’s music accompanies the film well but at the end of the day, the contrived nature of the story and the way our emotions are artificially manipulated by the director detracts from its overall effect. When he is good, as in most of the Japanese part and in some other scenes, Gonzalez Iñarritu is excellent. The rest of the time, it is like watching an accomplished director of advertising.
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