TRIBUTE TO THE MASTERS : BABEL

I have to admit that I am rather disillusioned by the number of film festivals and awards cropping up lately, even though it is of course a sign of growing interest in the arts. But luckily the good old quality festivals still remain to point us to the great work out there, and if you win, say, the award for Best Director in the Cannes Film Festival, you probably won it for a reason. The example in this case is Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu and he most DEFINITELY deserves every award he got for one of his latest masterpieces, Babel…
If you read the blurb, it seems dubious at first glance whether the film has anything original to offer. True, there is an all-star cast with such “tried and proven” names such as Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal. The story of various seemingly unconnected lives clashing and connecting in a big chaotic world is not the most original story in the world; it has been tried more than once by many directors in many contexts and the list in fact includes Inarritu himself! (Remember Amorres Perros?) But this time, Inarritu takes the method and uses it in such a way , with such skill and such successful actors that the result is breathtaking, heartbreaking and mindboggling…
And naturally, the actors deserve a mention in all this! Pitt and Blanchett give steady but not astounding performances so that don’t (perhaps luckily) overshadow the rest of the cast. And Gael Garcia Bernal definitely deserves a mention as the passionate and rebellious Santiago (read developing countries rebelling against the “great” politicians). But I think one of the greatest successes of the film is UNDOUBTEDLY Koji Yakusho who gives a harrowing and sometimes shocking performance as the hearing impaired Cheiko.
Without giving too much of the plot away, Babel is a story of innocent victims, endless prejudices, mindless beaurocracy and the countless human souls that get crushed in the midst of it. It is the story of that butterfly that beats its wing to cause a tragic storm… I will stop eulogizing and end this post now :)