Babel

The Film

"The Butterfly Effect" might be the best description for the phenomenon at work in Alejandro González Iñárritu's loose trilogy of grim dramas about life's often ugly realities, concluding here with Babel, following on from Amores Perros in 2000 and 21 Grams in 2003. This refers to the notion that a seemingly minor event can indirectly result in something far more significant: for example, a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan causing a tornado in Morocco. This metaphor turns out to be a rather apt means of describing the plot of Babel, although the full significance of the events taking place in Japan, and how they relate to what transpires in Morocco, the US and Mexico, is not revealed until relatively late in the game.

Iñárritu has, over the course of these three films, developed something of a house style, telling a series of fragmented and apparently unconnected storylines, often out of sequence, and gradually revealing how they interconnect. Of the three, the multinational Babel is undoubtedly the broadest in scope, occupying three continents and portraying the experiences of a much more diverse cast of characters than in the previous two films. Anything more than a very broad overview would undoubtedly spoil the effect of Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga's often highly imaginative connecting of disparate events, so, for the purposes of this review, my summary of the narrative will be brief.

The film begins in the mountains of Morocco, where two young boys are playing with the rifle their father, Abdullah (Mustapha Rachidi), uses to protect his goats from marauding jackals. Their game turns sour, however, when they realise that they have accidentally shot someone. That someone turns out to be Susan (Cate Blanchett), an American on a package tour of the country with her husband Richard (Brad Pitt). A considerable distance from the nearest hospital, the tour bus is forced to make an abrupt detour to a nearby village, with Susan's survival dependent on the meagre supplies and medical skills of the inhabitants. Meanwhile, in San Diego, nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza) decides to take the young children in her care on an impromptu trip over the border to her native Mexico in order to attend her son's wedding. Things take a turn for the worse, however, when the actions of her nephew Santiago (Gael García Bernal) land them both in trouble at the border checkpoint. Finally, deaf Tokyo teenager Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), frustrated by her inability to communicate with those around her, decides to take some rather drastic steps to get attention.


21 Grams drew its fair share of criticism for what many viewers considered to be going several steps too far in scrambling its narrative. It's not something I personally had a problem with, but, for some people, the scrambled chronology, when combined with multiple intersecting narratives, caused the film to slide from mere complexity into sheer confusion. Perhaps recognising that some people got a little lost in 21 Grams' tangled web, Iñárritu tells a far more linear story with Babel, flitting between different characters and locations but keeping the whole thing more or less in sequence. At the same time, though, in adopting a larger, more worldwide scope, he loses something in the process, making Babel less intense in its focus than its predecessor. The various strands don't really come together quite so effectively, to the extent that, unlike the earlier films, you don't quite get the sense that removing one plot strand would bring the whole thing crashing down. The Mexican sequences, as good as they are (in fact, they contain some of the most striking moments in the entire film), could technically have been removed without substantially affecting the Moroccan and Japanese material.

What allows the film to remain consistently engaging, even when it might seem as if the events transpiring on screen are completely irrelevant, is the continual battle suppremacy between Iñárritu's cinematic technique and the consistently excellent cast. Eschewing the comparatively consistent visual styling of the first two films in the trilogy, Babel was photographed using various cameras and lenses for the different segments, with the grainy 16mm footage in Morocco contrasting strongly with the smoother 35mm material set in Mexico and Japan. Unusually for a 1.85:1 ratio film, the Japanese segments were photographed in Anamorphic Panavsion and then cropped from the format's native 2.35:1 ratio, presumably do add a further degree of difference to the footage. The end result is subtle but definitely effective: the depth of field is narrower, the footage less grainy, and the distorted lens flares and light sources associated with anamorphic photography can be seen in many shots. Casting-wise, meanwhile, Cate Blanchett and a surprisingly aged-looking Brad Pitt never really disappear into their respective roles: their faces are too well-known, which detracts from Iñárritu's attempts to make the Moroccan sequences as realistic and documentary-like as possible. (Oddly, this was never a problem for me with 21 Grams, despite the presence of the likes of Naomi Watts, Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro.) The best performances, meanwhile, come from Adriana Barraza as the Mexican nanny, and Rinko Kikuchi (she of Kill Bill fame) as the troubled Chieki. The sexual situations in which the latter becomes involved, by the way, seem to have upset certain viewers, although oddly enough the sight of young boys playing with a rifle, and the tragic results of their actions, provoked considerably less consternation.

To some extent, it's tempting to question the very point of Babel. Its central moral appears to be that all people, regardless of their background and nationality, suffer in the same ways, which is far from the most original or insightful message ever commited to film. An inability to communicate seems also to be key, hence the title's reference to the Tower of Babel, but this is only really conveyed truly effectively during the Tokyo strand of the plot. There's a certain amount of self-importance to it all, and it's not really as profound as it wants to be, but it has a certain raw honesty that, combined with the superb performances of the cast and Iñárritu's technical flare, makes it one of the most hard-hitting and compelling films of 2006.

HD DVD Presentation

Paramount's initial batch of high definition releases arrived on HD DVD using the VC-1 codec, whereas their Blu-ray counterparts, which were encoded by Sony, used MPEG2. On the Blu-ray end, nothing has changed with Babel, but, for the HD DVD release, Paramount have opted to go with the lesser-used AVC codec. The result is a highly impressive transfer, especially considering that, given the complexity of a lot of the material, it could have gone so horribly, horribly wrong. There are some minor problems which prevent it from receiving a perfect 10/10 score, but to castigate Paramount for these really would be nothing more than nitpicking. The grain structure of the 16mm Moroccan sequences is rendered superbly, while the colours - from the muted Moroccan hillsides, to the cold Tokyo concrete jungle, to the rich hues of the Mexican streets - seem to be perfect. The only real flaws are a few very minor compression artefacts in a handful of scenes, and what looks like the slightest traces of edge halos in a couple of shots. All in all, this is the best transfer I've seen yet from Paramount.

The audio comes in English and French flavours - both Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 at 640 Kbps. The film has a fairly conservative mix, that makes little use of the rear channels, even when you would expect it - for example, the busy street scenes in Tokyo and Mexico, or the arrival and lift-off of a helicopter late in the game. Even the loud source music at the Mexican wedding and Japanese nightclub is completely front-focused, with the rears generally only adding the odd ambient effect here and there. This is a dialogue-centric film for the most part, so this is far from the end of the world, but it makes the audio seem considerably flatter and less textured than, say, the editing.

A lot of dialogue is in Japanese, Spanish and Arabic, and the subtitles for such material are player generated rather than burned-in, in a yellow typeface matching the English, French and Spanish subtitles provided for the film as a whole.

Extras

As with the DVD release, the only extra included is the theatrical trailer, presented here in 1080p high definition. Iñárritu is clearly of the school of filmmaking that believes the movie should be left to speak for itself. That said, there were at one point prior to the DVD's release some rumblings of a special edition in the pipeline, for simultaneous release, although nothing seems to have come of that so far.

Overall

One of the better modern films to see a high definition release gets an excellent presentation on HD DVD. The lack of extras is disappointing, but, given that this sparsity matches the film's standard definition counterpart, it's hard in this particular case to feel too short-changed. It may not be the sort of material to show off the full capabilities of your home theatre setup, but it's a solid representation of its source material, and as such, Babel gets my unreserved recommendation.

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