"Babel"

Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett star in this ambitious, seductive, but ultimately disappointing film.

By Andrew O'Hehir

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Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt

Oct. 27, 2006 | I've seen "Babel" twice now and had exactly the same reaction both times, which is pretty unusual in itself. An hour or so in, I found myself swept up in the picture, utterly seduced by its ambitious blend of colors, cultures and sensual experiences. It felt like a transformative experience, the kind of movie that reaches for the ineffable, combining prodigious cinematic technique with impressive human range. Then, somehow, over the last third of the film the energy gradually dissipates, leaving me asking a question that in this case doesn't bear close scrutiny: What is this movie, shot on three continents in at least seven languages, actually about?

There's a marvelous scene just past the halfway point, where we experience the pulsing light and sound of a Tokyo nightclub through the eyes and ears of a deaf teenage girl. Or, to be more accurate, we go in and out of her perceptions: Sometimes we see Chieko (the lovely Rinko Kikuchi) from the outside, seeing her captivated by the press of dancers, the explosive overhead light show, the dance remix of Earth Wind and Fire's "September" blasting on the soundtrack. And sometimes we see and hear the club from her point of view, with the music reduced to a floor-thumping bass beat and a dull, whispering roar.

It's the kind of electrifying, almost ecstatic moment that reveals Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu ("Amores Perros," "21 Grams") as one of the purest talents to emerge in this medium since Martin Scorsese. Beyond cinematic daring, the nightclub scene seems to reflect or capture, if only for an instant, the themes that González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga fumble with over the course of this sprawling two-hour-plus film. We are all connected, your experiences of joy and pain are closely akin to mine, but we can only pierce each other's consciousness in fleeting, split-second increments.

Personally, I believe all that, or I think I do. But the risk that "Babel" takes, in laboriously and lovingly connecting the private tragedies of four families in four different countries, is turning that observation, which may be lovely as a momentary flash of insight, into a stoned college freshman's profound theory about the universe. Tremendous resources have been expended here so that Cate Blanchett can lie on a dirt floor and moan, while we ponder why we can't all get along, and whether we aren't all the same under the skin.

Last spring at Cannes, González Iñárritu won the best director prize for "Babel," which seemed to me, even at the time, like a way of saying: We can't tell if the movie's any good in the end, but it sure looks great. (The cinematography, as in his other films, is by Rodrigo Prieto.) Mind you, the journey in this case may be well worth it, even if the destination turns out to be the same dusty corner we started from.

Scene by scene and storyline by storyline, "Babel" is a wrenching, engaging picture with tremendous tonal variation. While Chieko, the brassy, horny Tokyo teenager, is trying to get laid and dealing with the prejudice and disdain of hearing teens, many other things are happening at other points in the movie's space-time continuum. (This film's interlocking chronologies are nearly as complicated as those of "Memento" or "Pulp Fiction," but they're elegantly handled. By the end we know what has happened and in what order.)

Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Blanchett) are a California couple taking a bus tour through the Moroccan desert, in an attempt to repair their failing marriage. In the mountains they're passing through, a Berber farmer named Abdullah (Mustapha Rachidi) has just bought a rifle to protect his goat herd and entrusted it to his sons, Yussef (Boubker Ait El Caid) and Ahmed (Said Tarchani). Back in San Diego, Richard and Susan's kids, Debbie (Elle Fanning) and Mike (Nathan Gamble), are under the care of Amelia (Adriana Barraza), their beloved nanny, who needs some time off to visit her home village in northern Mexico for her son's wedding.

Something goes badly wrong in Morocco, though, and you can probably guess what. (This plot point is revealed near the beginning of the film, but if you really don't want to know more, move on to another article right now.) Hanging around on a desolate slope with the goats, Yussef and Ahmed persuade each other to take potshots at various distant targets. They shoot at the bus from a mile or more away, not understanding that they're firing a high-powered Winchester hunting rifle. They turn away, bored with the game. And then the bus screeches to a stop, and they hear distant screaming.

So begins an odyssey that will bring Richard and the critically injured Susan to a remote Berber village, where a veterinarian -- the only "doctor" anywhere in the vicinity -- stitches her wounds without anesthetic and an old woman gives her something to smoke that eases the pain. (One guess!) Meanwhile, Abdullah's family becomes the object of a manhunt by the ruthless Moroccan police, and the U.S. government makes angry noises about terrorism.

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