Well here’s another Crash wannabe.  We get separate stories only barely tied together through loose themes and threads, an abundance of good performances, and a lack of any idea of what to do with it all.  Babel is like a love-starved dog who wants to be noticed and loved, but it’s just so annoying you’ve got to lock it outside before it drives you mad with its incessant whimpering.

Babel
2 Stars

I wanted to like Babel, but when I wasn’t bored out of my skull I found myself bewildered by the odd make-up of the film and bizarre choices of its characters.  It wants so badly to be important, but lacks the detail necessary, instead providing us with a glut of stories and characters, that neither explored nor developed, which never come together.  Is it an interesting film exercise?  Maybe.  Is it a good film?  Not really.

A Babel-ing Mess

Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) are traveling with a tour group in Morrocco trying to get over the death of their youngest child.

In San Diego Amelia (Adriana Barraza) is taking care of the couple’s two young children, Mike (Nathan Gamble) and Debbie (Elle Fanning), and preparing to attend her son’s wedding in Mexico.

In Morocco two young boys are herding goats and are trying out their new rifle given to them by their father to keep away the jackals.

In Japan a young deaf teen, Cheiko (Rinko Kikuchi), struggles with the suicide of her mother, the long absence and despondency of her father (Koji Yakusho), and her anger at being deaf and being undesirable to young men.

Director Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu attempts to weave these stories together; he isn’t entirely successful.  The Morroco stories fit, but the others don’t gel with the framework of the film, and the Japanese story stands out as the best of, and most irrelevant to, the other threads of the film.

A film like this, with multiple stories that only vaguely touch on the same themes, either works or doesn’t.  This one doesn’t.  It’s too self-important, too long winded, and too fractured to make a coherent whole.  Themes cross – parenting, bad choices, the need for love, the disconnect of language – but there is no real framework to hold them together.  The director relies on the over-used method of the Roshomon-style to give some edge here, but it just makes the events and the timeline of the film confusing.

The film breaks a few of our Rules.  First the film screams to be acknowledged by the Award circuit.  Here the film breaks our “Oscar Bait Rule,” it has a large list of good performances but sadly lacks a coherent story to justify them.

I could probably have forgiven this flaw in the film, but it’s not the only problem.  The film also breaks our “WTF? Rule.”  In each of the four stories the characters perform an insane action that fails to make sense either in the framework of the story or reality.  The character presented has performed normal sane actions to this point, but here decides to make such an unlikely and ludicrous decision for no reason other than the script calls for it at that moment.  I’d like to go into more detail here, but each stark shift in sanity takes place late in the storyline of each plot thread and I don’t wish to ruin the “surprise” for you.  Instead I’ll just tell you I shook my head in disbelief as each story vears off the loooong winding road for a side-trip to crazywackofuntown.  What a waste.

Is there anything gained from telling these separate stories as a whole?  No.  Would the stories worked as well or better as separate films?  Maybe.  These are hard questions and even more troubling answers.  Babel gives us some great peromances and moments that are all but drowned out by it’s preening, excessive running time (more than two-hours and twenty-minutes), and repeated forays into insanity.

Little Children is one of those films that is good, but probably should have been better.  The film follows a small group of suburbanites looking for love and happiness in their dreary existence.  Nothing new is really explored here, but the characters are interesting and the acting is worth mentioning.  Not a must see by any means, but odds are it’s as good, if not better, as what is playing next door.

Little Children
3 & 1/2 Stars

Todd Field‘s film follows a group of suburbanites, each with desires and needs that aren’t being fulfilled, in need of something more.  The film is an ensemble piece about a group of people, all fragile and broken in some way, all searching, and yearning, to be loved.

Sarah (Kate Winslet) married to man (Gregg Edelman) who largely ignores her, who prefers to fantasize and masturbate to an Internet porn model, as she struggles to deal with raising her young daughter (Sadie Goldstein) and living in suburbia, which she views disdainfully as something akin to prison.

Brad (Patrick Wilson) is a stay-at-home dad of a young son (Ty Simpkins), unable to pass the state bar to get his license to practice law.  His wife (Jennifer Connolly) slowly, and possibly without meaning to, is chipping away at his self-esteem and self-worth.

The two discover each other on a local playground where a friendship develops, but a yearning for more is obvious.

Ronald (Jackie Earle Haley) is a sex offender living in the neighborhood with his mother (Phyllis Sommerville).  The other suburbanites are less than thrilled with the situation.

Larry (Noah Emmerich) is a former cop with his own family woes and dark past, and an obsession with removing Ronald from the neighborhood and making it safe for the children

These stories converge together with moderate success.  Think Crash, but just white people in suburbia.  I could have done without the Ronald storyline which only exists on the periphery for the main characters, but is explored in his own story (though, not well) at the cost of the film.  Despite getting his own subplot and a decent amount of screentime, we never really learn about Ronald.  Is he evil?  Is he simply disturbed?  Is he sorry for what he has done?  The narrator gives us clues into the other characters thoughts and lives but is oddly absent in Ronald’s case.

The film was adapted from the Tom Perrotta novel, and includes an omniscient narrator who is not present in the story.  This is a problem.  The narrator comes and goes and gives us insight to most, but not all of the characters, and often disappears for long stretches of time.  It also gives us insight to the thoughts and feelings of the characters, which the script itself doesn’t allow the actors to adequately portray.  I’m not sure, but I would venture to guess that reading the novel would be preferable to seeing the film.

The themes here aren’t exactly new to fans of American Beauty and The Ice Storm (both better films) and the like.  Still the mood and performances of the piece are worth acknowledging, and the film, even if it does derail itself at times, provides an interesting world to spend a couple of hours.