Babel

Alejandro González Iñárritu stubbornly sticks to the refined style that appealed to so many viewers in his previous two films. I used to be a fan of Amores Perros, but I didn’t like that much the celebrated 21 Grams. I enjoyed Babel less than AP but more than 21 Grams. It’s a mosaic composed of three, and therefore four, stories. If they did away with the one about the whiny Japanese girl, the film would be less than two hours long and I would likely be a little more satisfied. I don’t mean by this that the Japanese story was uninteresting, no, but it’s so distant and with a different atmosphere, and it always distracted me from the dirty desert settings of Mexico and Morocco. Moreover, its connection with the other two stories is only symbolic. (08/05/2011)

For me, this film by Alejandro González Iñárritu is right between Amores Perros and 21 Grams. Once again, the director relies on several stories in which the characters' fates intertwine more than one would expect. And he does it that again, but, unlike 21 Grams, where I liked all the stories, the one with the Japanese girl didn't really fit. I had the same dilemma with Amores Perros, where I knocked 1* off the rating because of the hysterical ex-model. Half of the film is based on an excellent sequence of images, accompanied by a wonderful score (deserved Oscar!), often better than the redundant and boring script. As for the acting, I was most impressed with Adriana Barraza and (despite my issues with  her story) Rinko Kikuchi. The rest of the cast was also good, but these two performances just stood out. So, I would like to say that Babel is a film that is definitely not lacking in quality. Its weakness may have been its running time, but that's up to each individual. I probably wouldn't watch it a second time, but who knows? All in all, a better 4*. (06/23/2010)

What Babel clearly excels at is the chilling and haunting music along with the perfect sense of scene by the director and the entire creative team. There isn't much talking and everything important is said by the scene itself, the background music or the situation itself, and it's not often that filmmaking gets me like this after a screening and make me think about the film even further. Babel is, in fact, a blend of four stories, where each one stands on its own, but gradually they all become entangled and each one manages to "grab" the viewer in a different way. Having said that, I have to admit that this is definitely not a film for everyone and even I found it harder to get through the first half, which is just terribly slow and plodding, but once I got through it, I was rewarded with a gritty, authentic emotional experience on all four fronts, and the finale still resonated within me for some time. Ordinary yet chilling, and "about nothing" yet profound. Most of the credit goes to the director for his excellent talent to put his best into the scenes, and especially Gustavo Santaolalla with his background music - after this film I'm going to seek out all his work and have a nice listen. And for anyone who would also like it, I recommend Gustavo Babetti - Babel. (01/14/2024)

Alejandro González Iñárritu has reached the zenith of his mosaic-laden journey. I would like to say that he took the best from Amores Perros and 21 Grams and combined them together, but that is not the case. Still, Babel remains the director's best work. He managed to avoid a bit of the unfortunate confusion from his previous film, endowed all the storylines with emotional richness, and mixed everything in a way that I could barely catch my breath right from the first second, for over two hours. And it wouldn't be Iñárritu if there wasn't some message present in his film. Babel almost screams for humanity, solidarity, and help, which in some moments brings tears to the viewer's eyes, and in others simply pins them to their seats. (02/28/2007)

Iñarritu abandons the time fragmentation of 21 Grams and, as in his first film, tells several intertwining stories. The Mexican episode is probably the weakest, with relatively little emotional impact, while the Japanese one seems to have fallen out of another film, but thanks to the likeable lead actress it’s one of the most enjoyable. Great emotions take place in Morocco, with the story of a shepherd and his sons that escalates with great urgency at the end, while the fate of the injured American woman is gripping in places thanks to the great performances of the central duo Pitt – Blanchett, whose circumstantially forced intimate moments are among the film's strongest. The Moroccan episodes are clearly worth 5*, the other two 3*, but if I had to compare, Iñárritu's previous 21 Grams had much more emotional charge overall, at least for me. (02/06/2007)