Babel is a movie that's trying to make a point and the point is that when people can't or won't communicate, bad things happen. The point it really makes though is that people make stupid decisions and then guess what? They have to accept the consequences of those decisions. It's a depressing film with hardly any likable characters, so maybe its real point is that there are idiots around the globe. Except you get the feeling that some of these idiots you're supposed to feel sorry for.
The movie weaves four storylines together. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are the biggest names in the film, but they get no more screen time than the rest of the cast, despite what you might have been led to believe by the previews. They play the "ugly American tourist" couple on a bus tour of Morocco trying to patch together their damaged marriage. A couple of young boys are playing around with a new rifle they were given by their father to shoot jackals and they start firing it at passing cars. One of their bullets hits Blanchett in their tour bus. Brad calls his nanny in San Diego and tells her that he needs her to stay with their children instead of going to her son's wedding since he has no one else to stay with them. Instead, the nanny takes the children into Mexico with her, despite not having their parents' permission and even though she is an illegal alien. The fourth storyline bears only a tenuous connection to the other stories and involves a Japanese, deaf-mute teenage girl living in Tokyo with her father. She is the only character in the movie who invokes sympathy, but then how hard is it to make an audience feel sympathy for a cute, but deaf, teenage girl who is alienated, confused and alone?
Everyone in this movie makes mistakes. Pitt's mistake is thinking that a vacation will solve his marriage and I know the filmmakers want you to think he's rude and intolerant of the locals and yes, he is insensitive, but how about someone in the audience has their wife shot sitting next to them and then see how calmly and perfectly they react. The boys make the obvious mistake of playing with a gun as if it were a toy. The teenage girl makes the mistake of thinking that sex will somehow help her find acceptance in the world and make up for the loss of her mother. And lastly, the Nanny, who understandably wants to go to her son's wedding, makes every mistake you can possibly imagine. At the end she has a scene that is supposed to make you feel sorry for the predicament that the filmmakers have put her in, but I could muster no sympathy for her.
While the message might be a bit murky, the production values are top-notch. From the gritty desert to the neon-colored streets of Tokyo, the movie transports you visually around the world with a "you are there" feeling. The acting is equally well done. While Pitt and Blanchett are the big names, it is Rinko Kikuchi as Chieko, the Japanese teenager who steals the movie. Although the movie does run too long, it runs at a quick, frenetic pace that means it never drags.
The mistake Babel makes is trying to be a big important movie, but while it's good at showing the foibles of different cultures clashing, and how the breakdown of communication can adversely affect us all, it does it in a muddled, heavy-handed manner that offers no solutions or real resolutions.
Babel is a movie with its heart in the right place, but like its own characters, its message gets lost in translation.
