BabelAn all around good drama consisting of four interlocking substories. Elle, now eight, has a fairly small and passive role, but will still impress any fan of hers.
The one and only thing I'd change about Babel is the shortness of Elle's
role. Not that it's a poor role, but more about that later. The movie
consists of four interlocking stories. Each is interesting in its own
right, and even more so together. The starting point of the events is an
Arabic family, living in a hut in barren, sparsely populated mountains of
Morocco. The head of the family buys a rifle from his friend, for shooting
the jackals that kill his goats. His sons, in a gross error of judgment,
test the rifle on a tourism bus, and end up seriously wounding an American
woman.
The woman, Susan, and her husband Richard (Brad Pitt) are taking time away
from their son and daughter after the infant-death of their third child.
The bus is hours away from the closest hospital, so Richard takes Susan to
a nearby Moroccan village where they end up staying and waiting for help.
This comprises the second substory.
Debbie (Elle) being tucked in Their children are staying home in San Diego, in the care of their longtime
nanny, a middle-aged Mexican woman named Amelia. The girl, Debbie, is
played by Elle, who is now eight years old, and noticeably changed from her
previous film, Because of Winn-Dixie. Amelia's
son is to be married in Mexico, but Richard tells her that he and his wife
are unable to make it back in time, and insists she continue to watch the
kids. Unable to find anyone else to babysit the children, Amelia makes the
risky decision of taking them with her to the wedding. They are given a
ride by Amelia's nephew, an easy-going young man, who we later learn
carries a gun and has a history of drunk driving.
The connection between the last substory and the other three is not
apparent until later in the movie. The final substory takes place in Japan,
and focuses on a deaf teenaged girl called Chieko who is struggling to get
the attention of the opposite sex, caused largely by her impairment.
Matters are not helped by the recent suicide of her mother, and her distant
relationship with her father.
The sister It's hard not to compare the four cultures the movie features, as well as
the way they are presented. The two major conflicts, in an abstract sense,
are between the cultures of the US and Morocco, and the US and Mexico. In
both cases it's ultimately a question of the rich versus the poor. The
movie does very good job of showing all of its major characters in a
sympathetic way: as humans living their lives to their best ability in face
of life-altering problems – problems caused by their own impulsiveness
and rash decisions.
The most dramatic cultural contrast comes from the difference between what
Richard and Susan expect of their country as they wait for medical help in
an isolated Moroccan village, and what the Moroccan family expects of its
future when it's discovered their sons have killed an American tourist.
Richard demands and eventually gets help from his embassy and from his
fellow tourists. For the Moroccans, not much understanding is to be
expected from the police of their country. To the merit of the film, none
of this is underlined or force-fed to the audience, but neither is the
matter hidden from sight.
Richard The 2 hour 23 minute length of Babel is well used, with plenty of character
development without erring on the side of meaningless meandering. One of
the more memorable details not directly relevant to the plot is the
semi-incestuous relationship between the daughter and one of the sons of
the Moroccan family. Both seem about fourteen years old, the boy perhaps
younger. We witness the girl undressing while knowing her brother is
watching, and he masturbating later on, apparently to the thought of his
sister. It's a daring detail for a mainstream film, and does a good job in
helping you see the involved characters as people rather than generic
examples of their culture.
Elle's character, one of the two children taken care of by Amelia, has the
common purpose of passively being a child in distress. It's however an
essential role for the story, and some time is spent developing the
character. Especially endearing is the scene where she's being tucked in by
Amelia, and worries of dying in her sleep like her baby brother did. All in
all she doesn't have very many lines, but is shown enough to make it
worthwhile for any Elle fan. I'm not surprised if this movie even brings
her some new fans, given how much she has grown since the last time I saw
her, in Because
of Winn-Dixie, and how beautifully she's shown. If Elle is not your
type, consider nonetheless seeing this movie for its many other merits.
IMDb gives Babel a good score 7.7 out of 10, and I'll give it 3.4 out of 5.
Chieko |
Elle Fanning
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
![[bio]](/images/common/biography.png "More about Elle"){kind=small}
