Babel (2006)

Babel has received a lot of praise (and nominations), and I couldn't resist the temptation of internet piracy. After watching it though, I felt I might not need to break another law and buy the pirated DVD, because the film simply isn't that good.
There are quite a few films whose success are at least partially based on their structure and methodology (sorry to bring up a professional term from my own field of expertise...). Momento immediately jumps to mind, as perhaps the most structurally successful film I've ever seen. The whole film is all about its clever story-telling. Then we have films like last year's Crash, which is based on the surprising collusions of the characters' fates, as we learn that the separate story-lines are inextricably woven together.
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu's earlier effort, 21 Grams, is about solving the puzzle of the seemingly unconnected characters' relationships. With Babel, he shows even bigger ambition, by trying to tell 4 stories at the same time. Of course, these four stories are related - they have to be, right? - but that's one of the film's weaker points, because whereas in 21 Grams and Crash the separate lines clashed together resulting in excellent analyses of human nature, here in Babel they are just superficially linked. Most of the links are revealed quite early on, and there isn't any further development to the stories' inter-relationships (only simple references here and there such as TV news clips to remind us that the stories are happening parallel to each other). To me, this suggests that the film's structure has no real meaning except for the sake of being so, and that's my biggest complaint with this film.
That's a shame, because separately the stories are quite interesting anyway. It might be interesting if Babel was just a series of 4 short stories, not woven together but just shown one after the other. While this deprives the film of its current eye-catchy structure, it will force us to appreciate the stories for what they are really worth. As it is, everything in the film has a faint trace of pretension, a show cleverly put together in the name of art instead of haunting portrayals of real life tragedies.
The film boasts some big names, but you'll find them surprisingly modest - Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are immediately likable as a couple trying to patch up their marriage on a exotic Middle East tour. What really steals the show, though, aren't the familiar faces (including Gael García Bernal from The Motorcycle Diaries), but the ensemble cast as the Moroccan goatherd family - the two kids, their father - who are at once truly believable. The rest of the cast, in the separate stories, also deserve praise for their efforts.
As for the cinematography and editing, it is equally excellent. There are some great sequences here and there throughout the film, making the film technically speaking hard to criticize. However, this only further emphasizes the film's shortcomings in its content and theme.
In the end, Babel is still a decent effort and a fine film. It is technically brilliant to watch, but it doesn't really tell us much in its lengthy (it's a long film that feels long, long) prose.
7/10