I saw this at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH. It’s a great film to watch in a theatre.

The Japanese parts were interesting enough, but the movie as a whole was heavy-handed emotion manipulation.

Alejandro González Iñárritu was on “The Treatment” today to talk about this film. You can listen to the interview or podcast it. ;-)

This movie encompasses four families, intertwined in seemingly irrelevant ways. However, the movie shows just how inticately connected a family in Tokyo, Mexico, America, and Morroco can be.

Overall, the movie was quite beautiful. I equate it with Road to Perdition, Garden State, and Stranger than Fiction, in terms of the cinematography being artfully done. There are plenty of parts of this music left to the soundtrack and the views.

The actors were very, very good. Though you’re reading subtitles for the Japanese, Sign Language, Spanish, and whatever language Moroccans speak, you’re still able to enjoy the movie as if were done entirely in your own language. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are superb as expected, but all of the additional actors were equally wonderful, from the Morrocan boys down to the Japanese inspectors. You won’t wish for any other actor in anyone’s place.

The only downfall for me was the extreme realism in this movie. There’s a scene with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchette in a “hut” in Morocco, her unable to move due to a gunshot wound. She explains that she has wet herself because she couldn’t hold it, and that she needs to go again. Brad Pitt’s character asks for a pan and some privacy. After positioning her to go, they kiss, deeply. I found this mildly disturbing. These sorts of extreme realism are generally left out of the grittiest Hollywood movies. But this sort of realism lent itself to the movie. You may feel as I did, appalled by the Japanese girl’s overt sexuality, maybe you can’t even understand it, but you’ll like it at the end. For everytime you winced in pain, or embarassment for the characters, your movie experience is enhanced by these scenes.

If you like your Hollywood movies a little shinier, more glamorous, don’t see it. If you hate subtitles, don’t see it. If you can’t understand the mistakes humans make that are fairly indecent, don’t see this. However, if you’re open and interested in humanity, how we’re connected, other cultures, and the truth inside humans, then, you’ll love it.

And yes, it is very, very much like Crash. It doesn’t tell an American story, it tells the world’s story. Crash is a little more Hollywood, concerned with words, and creating a beautiful story of mildly uncomfortable situations. Babel is more real, crosses more borders, and isn’t concerned with prejudice as much as with how people deal with everything life can be and the mistakes so easily made in one second of poor judgement.

It’s one of those movies where the scenary takes a lot of the focus. Some people would get bored by this. It’s along the lines of Constant Gardener x 4 stories. It examines how influential Americans are in different situations, how Americans treat Mexicans, being a deaf mute in society – especially one in the neon lit, audio and visual intense city of Tokyo, and the special treatment and expecations of Americans in a foreign country.

A bit hard to believe some of the tour members would be so heartless, but they didn’t want to give a big roll to those actors. The Mexican wedding provided some relief from the tension.

Lies were also a big theme. The children lieing about what they did at first, and then the Mexican nanny trying to get home before she was found out. Both lead to trouble.

Some ask what you make of such a movie that has no conclusive ending. I think it just captures two days in the life of some people.

I think they could have added more to the story of the Japanese father. He could have gotten into more trouble for being the owner of the gun? But it was already a 2 hour movie.

Movie also deals with the vulnerability of humans. Blanchett’s character being shot and the children and the nanny suffering from heat stroke in the desert.

I disagree that it was in any way like Crash. The story in Crash was more profound.