Babel
With the Oscars quickly approaching, I found it my duty to watch the only film nominated for Best Picture that I hadn’t yet seen. Mind you I saw the other films with no nomination-related motivation well before they were even announced. But with Babel, it came down to whether I wanted to be fully engaged with the Oscars and its biggest nominee or not.
The other reason was a far sillier one. It has to do with what has been dubbed the Three Amigos…Alfanso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro Innaritu. The films of the first two were both dark sinister works that combined a realm of fantasy with gritty realism. They employed rich storytelling designs geared towards immersing the audience in another place and time. For Children of Men, it was post-apocalyptic London. For Pan’s Labyrinth, it was Franco-era Spain seen through the eyes of an imaginative girl.
So I thought two out of three ain’t bad. There’s a good chance third time will also charm.
And Babel has all the ingredients for it. Gritty realism, check. A storytelling design that was ambitious, check. Immersive settings, check. And for the first 45 minutes or so, that is enough to keep me engaged. There’s a honeymoon period where every set up feels so fresh with potential.
For the next hour and a half, the film blows that potential in various ways. And then you realize that you’ve been had…all the far reaching non-story stories were meant to make talking points about our international attitudes. In other words, it’s Crash but with subtitles.
Now, mind you, this film is no where near as bad as Crash…that would require a truly gifted terrible filmmaker. No, this is just disappointing for all the promise you felt going in. Only one of the stories really delivers something in the end (the Japanese story), and even then it’s barely enough. The story is way too focused on its Butterfly Effect virtuosity than it is on how the characters are changing with each ordeal.
Having said that, I have no doubt that it can and will win Best Picture.
