Babel

Babel

2006

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, Adriana Barraza, Rinko Kikuchi

My husband rarely watches my 1001 Movies flicks with me.  He’s not a movie buff the way I am, and I would never want to force him to watch, say, an intense Swedish film – like Bergman – unless, for some reason, he really wanted to.  Which normally, he doesn’t.  But he wound up watching Babel with me, almost on accident, in that he was playing a video game in the same room and wound up getting pulled into the film, watching the last hour with the video game on pause.  Do not let this be a comment on Babel amazing quality, however, as when it was over, we turned to look at one another and vocalized our almost identical reactions. 

“That could have been so much better.”

Waving the ride of the concept of telling multiple interconnected stories, Babel’s interconnected stories are in Morocco, California and Mexico, and Tokyo.  An American couple (Blanchett and Pitt) are vacationing in Morocco when the wife is accidentally shot on their tour bus.  The shooter is a young Moroccan boy out tending goats with his older brother; the two were simply monkeying around with the new rifle their father bought for killing jackals.  While the young boys panic and try to hide what they did, the husband of the stricken wife desperately searches for medical attention in the remote farmland of a country whose language and custom he does not know.  Meanwhile, back in California, the children of the American couple are taken to Mexico by their live-in nanny Amelia (Barraza) because her son is getting married and she can find no one to look after them.  While things are fine initially, problems eventually arise.  And finally, in Japan, a teenage deaf-mute Chieko (Kikuchi) is frustrated enough at the world for not understanding her condition; her distant father and dead mother don’t make things any easier.  Chieko starts acting out in possibly dangerous ways as we begin to understand just how angry and hurt she really is.

The reason I said above that this could have been so much better is because the central themes of Babel are good ones, solid ones, even necessary ones.  The very idea that we live in an age of international connectivity is one that is vital to moving forward, and yet this remains an idea that many people, cultures, and countries eschew.  The issues Babel raises around this theme, that of language barriers and lack of communication, are equally profound.  We are all connected to one another, and we must embrace this as the world becomes smaller and smaller, but we have a great deal of barriers in our way that prevent us from truly embracing the similarities we all have.  This idea is important.  Babel deals with important and significant cultural debates. 

It just doesn’t delve into these questions nearly as well as it thinks it does.

Three of the four central tales in Babel are all clearly linked to one another.  The American woman is shot by kids in Morocco while the woman’s own children attend their nanny’s son’s wedding in Mexico back home.  Yes, three stories, all with a very clear thread of connectivity.  Then there’s the Tokyo story.  Yes, there is a link between Chieko’s tale and what’s happening with the other characters, but it’s flimsy at best and feels like a big stretch, as if the writers came up with this great Tokyo plotline but had to find a way to shoehorn it in to the other threads.  Right away, this takes away from Babel’s strength as a film, as there seems to be an oddball tale awkwardly fitted in between the other, related plotlines.  Which is really a shame, because for my money, the Tokyo plotline was easily the most interesting part of the film.  Granted, the type of story and characters in this chapter make me predisposed to liking it more – few, introspective characters, internal turmoil, drama and angst, as opposed to the distinct action/adventure/thriller aspect of the other three tales – but even my husband admitted to finding the Tokyo story (a phrase I cannot type without thinking Ozu) the most compelling, and he’s definitely an action/adventure/thrilling kind of guy.  Honestly, I wish it had been its own film; Kikuchi’s Chieko is devastatingly honest and a frightening pillar of uncontrolled strength and emotion.  When she is not commanding the screen, the film lags, as if Babel itself wishes it could have spent more time with Chieko.

Although for my money, Kikuchi is the best of the bunch, the performances in Babel are all stellar and were probably the biggest strength of the film.  Naturally, Cate Blanchett is amazing, but that’s rather a given.  It’s easy to understand why Adriana Bazzara earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, but it’s Brad Pitt and the nonprofessional Moroccan actors who really manage to buoy the entire film.  Pitt is an actor easy to underestimate; his non-stop tabloid presence and impossible good looks can work against him.  But here, he is very good, very strong as a man who finds himself entirely out of his league and facing a life and death situation.  Right alongside him, the actors portraying the Moroccan family torn asunder by a rifle do a tremendous job.  The two young boys underplay most of their scenes, a fact that works best with child actors, and the Moroccan father believably carries the role of emotional heavy in what is a gut-wrenching tale.  Innaritu must be commended for coaxing such strong performances from every single member of such a varied cast.

*********************************SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING************************************

But ultimately, I have a bit of a problem with the overall message of the film, and this is why I say it could have been such a better movie.  When considering the ending of all four stories, I have to ponder what exactly Innaritu managed to say.  Think: the Moroccan family is completely torn apart, facing jail and possibly the death of one of its own.  Their lives will never be the same again.  The Mexican maid is ungraciously deported, forced to leave behind her entire life and not allowed even a suitcase of her belongings.  Chieko’s emotional future is anything but certain as she pushed herself to dangerous places.  Three of the four stories have distinctly downer endings.

But what happens to the white people?  Oh, no worries, everyone survives and gets back home in one piece.  Really, is that the message we’re going with?  Everyone’s interconnected in this world of ours, and bad stuff happens all over the place, but if you’re American, everything will be fine?  Is this some sort of subtle commentary on white privilege by Innaritu?  Although you may disagree with me on this one, I don’t think it is.  Rather, I feel like the writers felt the need to have one story end happily and they picked the white Americans one.  I really wish they hadn’t.  It would have felt so much stronger to have one of the stories involving a different culture, a different set of people, end well and to have something sad happen to the Americans.  But no, Babel is fundamentally an American film, marketed and shown to American audiences, and we can’t have our American audiences having their delicate sensibilities upset.  So we’ll force all the tragedy onto the people of color and ensure that our own get through unscathed.  This wrapping up of the plotlines undercuts the international message of the film, and thus much of the power of Babel.  Again, this could have been better.

Edit to add: After a bit of time away from this, perhaps the above is the point? Perhaps Innaritu is actually brilliantly calling out white privilege by having that plot line be the only one that has anywhere near a happy resolution. Actually, I don’t believe that is the case, I don’t feel this movie is quite that… clever, but I admit it’s a possibility.

***************************************DONE WITH THAT THEN*******************************

Babel smacks too much of a film specifically designed to make you feel like crap.  The stories continually scream at you to “BE SAD!!”  And if that isn’t enough, all the ancillary filmmaking techniques, such as score and cinematography, belabor the point, yelling at you to “BE SADDER!!!!!!!!”  While a perfectly acceptable film in that there isn’t anything too egregiously wrong with it, I was left a touch underwhelmed.  This is disappointing, as the issues Babel raises are interesting ones.  Again, I reiterate that the biggest message I got from it was wishing that Chieko’s plotline had been developed into a standalone film, as I would rather have watched that.

Arbitrary Rating: 7/10.

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

1975

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Starring: the most uncomfortable two hours of my life.

My usual modus operandi for writing these little blog pieces is as follows:

1. Watch the film in question, giving it my full attention, and thinking critically about what I can say about it as I watch it.

2. When I feel ready to write about the film, be it immediately following the viewing of the film or a few days later, put the film on for a second time and have it on in the background while I write so as to remind me of scenes/moments/thoughts I want to comment on.

I shall not be holding to this strategy for today’s film, and the reputation of the film in question is more than enough to tell you why.

The story unfolds in 1944 Fascist Italy, where several powerful men, accompanied by some aging female prostitutes and young men that they have decided are their guards, kidnap eighteen young teenagers and take them to an estate.  What then proceeds is a non-stop sadistic (fitting, as it was based on a story originally penned by the Marquis de Sade) horror story, as pain, rape, humiliation, and eventually torture and murder are in store for the unfortunate teenagers.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wear it as a fucking badge of honor that the one and only time I saw this film was in a theater.

Why?  Well, back when I was borderline obsessed with getting through the 1001 Movies list, Salo was unavailable on DVD.  Or VHS.  Nowhere could one find a copy of it at a reasonable price, and I wasn’t about to pay two hundred bucks for an out of print laser disc copy from ebay.  Turner Classic would hardly air this film. 

And then the Dryden, as it always does, came to the “rescue.”  In the summer of 2007, they had a screening of Salo.  What was slightly unusual about the screening is that the Dryden took greater pains than normal to warn the audience about the nature of this film, and had a strict “No one under 18 admitted” policy.

So, because Salo graces the pages of 1001 Movies and I had no other options, I traipsed out to watch a film I knew would horrify me.  Fantastic.

The Dryden is not an enormous theater.  It seats 500 and has two sections, an orchestra section and a balcony.  The screen itself is moderately sized; it’s not a giant screen in the slightest.  I mention this because I nearly always choose to sit in the orchestra section to feel closer to the film.  Because the screen isn’t enormous, if I sit in the balcony, I feel too far-removed from the film to have that immersive movie theater experience. 

Although I hadn’t seen Salo before that night, I knew its reputation and before I sat in my normal spot (back row center orchestra), I paused.

Did I *really* want to be close to THIS particular film?

No.

Balcony it was.

I physically distanced myself from this film before I had even seen it, and god, I’m glad I did. 

What do I remember of Salo?  I remember sitting in that darkened movie theater and cringing.  Physically cringing.  I didn’t go quite so far as to put my hands in front of my eyes, but I did start pulling a turtle and trying to hide myself in my hoodie, my body curling in on itself as a defense mechanism.  I grimaced, I tried to turn away, and then it eventually became a question of simply making it through the movie.

I remember never having felt so goddamn uncomfortable while watching a movie.  This was a level of discomfort that no war movie, no bizarre experimental film, and no film that has anything to do with pets (all of which are my least favorite kinds of movies) had ever put me through. 

I remember it finishing, the lights coming back on, and thinking, “Thank god.  Time to get the fuck out of here.”

I do not remember the exact plot, and I’m fine with that.  I do not remember all the details of all the scenes of sexual humiliation, and I’m fine with that.  I do not remember character’s names, and I’m fine with that.

I am perfectly fine with never seeing this movie again.  Ever. 

Hell, even reading a detailed description of the plot on Wikipedia was too much for me, and I wound up only skimming it. 

I mean, what else am I supposed to say about a movie where a girl is punished for crying by being made to eat human poo? 

The other film I think of when I think about films dealing with humiliation is John Waters’ Pink Flamingos.  That’s another film that I don’t enjoy, but I’ll say give me Pink Flamingos over Salo any day of the week.  At least Pink Flamingos is rife with camp and tongue-in-cheek attitude that lessens the feeling of horror.  Sure, it’s obnoxious, but at least it has an intent of comic outrageousness, and that coats the humiliation just a bit, making it easier to get through.

Pasolini is so damned unapologetic about what he puts up there on the screen in Salo that it feels as if he is purposely torturing the audience as well as the cast of characters.  There is no attempt on his part to “make it go down easier.”  Nope, he’s saying, this material is hard, and I’ll be danged if I make it easier for you.

Salo is getting a low score for me, but I’m not giving it the lowest possible score, and here’s where, oddly enough, I feel like I need to explain why.  (Funny, me explaining why it won’t actually get a one out of ten.)  Because, as repugnant a film as it is, I don’t feel as though it’s repugnant just for funsies or by accident.  There is intent here, and there is anger here, and there is passion here.  Underneath all the horrible scenes set to film in Salo, Pasolini has a message about corruption and power and perversion.  It’s not pretty to sit through, but it’s undeniably there.  What’s more, it’s well-constructed film.  Awful, yes, but Pasolini knew what he was doing in terms of cinematography.  There’s a reason that this is called “an art film,” because it honestly looks like art.  Sometimes horrible, horrible art, but art nonetheless.  So I must give Pasolini his due and admit to Salo, despite its awfulness, is well-imagined awful and made with the intent of being awful and with purpose.  (I’m giving the side-eye to films like Vinyl which seem to have absolutely no intent whatsoever here…)

I mean, if nothing else, I can appreciate that the above shot is pretty. 

Did I have to see Salo before I died?  I’m not sure.  Frankly, given the enormous reputation of the film in film circles and the immediate reaction the film gets whenever anyone brings it up in any conversation, I begrudgingly admit to being glad I’ve seen it, if for no other reason than I can meaningfully participate in said conversations.  Do I need to see Salo again before I die?  HELL NO.

Once was more than enough.

Arbitrary Rating: 2/10.

Le Million, because I like to celebrate American holidays with French films?

Le Million

1931

Director: Rene Clair

Starring: Rene Lefevre, Annabella, Paul Ollivier

I make it no secret that I love musicals.  They’re comfort films, they pick me up when I’m down, they make me happy.  But I don’t love all musicals indiscriminately; I tend to prefer musicals where the musical numbers are incorporated into the everyday lives of the characters over those that have to use the stage as a “reason” to have song and dance.  I think this coincides with my love of heavily stylized film; having characters spontaneously break into song and dance, while troubling to many of my fellow blogger friends, is something I love, as it reinforces that this movie is taking place in a different world.  The world of the movie musical is usually one full of sunshine and happiness.  I welcome this alternate reality.  When I first encountered Rene Clair’s superb Le Million, it was as if I had unearthed The First Musical Ever.  While Busby Berkeley (rightly) gets a great deal of credit for popularizing the movie musical with his raucous films, I give Rene Clair the credit for introducing, or at least legitimizing, the idea of incorporating music into the everyday action of his films.

The story is very simple: Michel (Lefevre), a broke artist, unexpectedly wins the lottery.  This is great news, as it will allow him to pay off his many debtors and maybe even marry pretty Beatrice (Annabella) who lives in the apartment across the hall from him.  Problem is, he left his winning ticket in his jacket pocket, the same jacket that Beatrice just lent to Grandpa Tulip (Ollivier), a Robin Hood-esque figure who runs a petty crimes syndicate dedicated to stealing from the rich to give to the poor.  Michel must track down his missing jacket and missing ticket in order to claim his winnings.

  

Le Million is a musical, but not a traditional one.  There are few, if indeed any, “musical numbers” in terms of what we think of today as big showstopping song and dance numbers.  Instead, there is an almost constant use of music and sound throughout the film which, accompanied by an irrepressible sense of whimsy, establishes the mood if not the specific logistics for so many great musicals to come.  There are many small musical touches that aren’t combined into fully realized “songs.”  For example, the scene where all of Michel’s debtors marching up the stairs in unison as they sing (well, more like chant) about how they’re about to get paid isn’t strictly speaking a song, but it’s a great example of how Clair approaches his world in Le Million.  The couple of Michel and Beatrice make up after their required fight (this is a musical, after all, of course the lovers have a fight about something or other) in an incredibly clever setting, stuck on the stage of an opera while the couple in the show sings a love ballad to each other.  Would I call this a musical number?  No, not in the traditional sense, but it’s a very winning use of a love song that isn’t sung by the hero or heroine.  And then there is the unexpected yet ridiculously charming “football game” over the missing suit jacket, where Clair pipes standard crowd noises over the film as the men turn the jacket into a football, complete with tackles and huddles.

  

The plot of Le Million is simple enough and the comedy broad enough that this could have been a silent film, but it’s the above scenes that make me glad it isn’t.  Yes, silent films had musical scores, but they were simply scores, no sound effects, and it’s really the sound effects that shine brightest here.  It’s odd to think of someone actually inventing the concept of the “sound effect,” but Rene Clair does a fantastic job in Le Million of incorporating sound smartly.  Too many early sound films were nothing but cacophonous excuses to cram as much rhythmic noise (NOT music) into the ears of the audience that they never stopped to think about sound as a storytelling technique.  This does NOT apply Le Million, as it is quiet when it needs to be, and jubilantly loud when it needs to be, and most of all, using all manners of sound – dialogue, music, and effects – to tell its tale.  Sound furthers the story and adds to the overall charm.  If this were not a primitive musical, if this were instead a silent film, it would not be Le Million, but something inferior.  

  

Le Million is irrepressibly fun.  It exists in a world where it is never cloudy, and although our characters may encounter problems, never fear, for they will find a way out.  People occasionally start walking in time with one another singing a few snatches of song with one another.  A suit jacket becomes a football.  This right here, all of these things, these would become the Great Hollywood Musical in future years as film evolved.  It is all here, in a distilled, primitive form, but there for the taking.  It is so easy to see how a film like Le Million, in just a year or two, would lead to the Fred and Ginger musicals like Top Hat or Swing Time, and then, in a few more years, to the Technicolor extravaganzas like Singin’ in the Rain.  While hardly emotionally or intellectually taxing, Le Million to me is a sure thing.  A sure thing to pick me up, a sure thing to make me smile, a sure thing to usher in a cheery mood. 

Arbitrary Rating: 8.5/10

Monsoon Wedding

Monsoon Wedding

2001

Director: Mira Nair

Starring: Naseeruddin Shah, Vasundhara Das, Shefali Shetty, Vijay Raaz

There was a time in my life, for quite a few years, actually, when my cinematic diet consisted entirely of the same fare that is Monsoon Wedding.  In the past ten years or so, I’ve stretched myself, imbibing film after film that is far beyond genres I usually watch, learning to love movies outside my comfort zone.  It’s been a wonderful experience, and one that I wouldn’t change, but every now and then, it feels incredibly comforting to settle down with a frothy little romantic dramedy.  Seeing Monsoon Wedding for the first time took me back, man.

Aditi (Das) is getting married.  Her father (Shah) is stressed, the wedding planner (Raaz) is an incompetent goofball, and her cousin Ria (Shetty) seems to be depressed.  Aditi herself isn’t terribly jazzed about the arranged marriage to an Indian man from Houston, Texas she’s never met, especially as she’s still in love with her married ex-boyfriend.  As the scores of relatives descend upon the family house for the days of wedding ceremonies, romance blossoms in unlikely places just as old family secrets are revealed.  Nothing like a wedding to bring out the best – and worst – in people.

  

Undoubtedly, the central theme of Monsoon Wedding is the universality of the Crazy Family.  This is a film cut from the same cloth as My Big Fat Greek Wedding, with a cast of cacophonous characters doing their best to confuse you with their identities and separate plights.  There are several storylines continually being developed by the rather large cast, but in the end, it doesn’t matter, because it’s really just about this family muddling through.  Wait, there’s one scene where the father mentions money problems but it doesn’t really go anywhere?  No worries.  The story of the younger brother being sent off to boarding school feels markedly unresolved?  Don’t trouble yourself.  Just as in real life, not every tangent can find a conclusion in the time span of a long weekend.  Monsoon Wedding is about family, plain and simple, and how everyone in the family carries their own cross to bear, but ultimately love, be it romantic or familial, finds a way to triumph. 

Multiple plotlines and large casts can feel confusing, and when you add in the fact that Hindi, Punjabi, and English are all spoken in Monsoon Wedding, sometimes even in the same five minute period, the film constantly feels as though it’s teetering on a knife’s edge.  Credit where credit is due, then, to director Mira Nair, who manages to keep all the balls in the air and continually moves the film forward by focusing on Aditi’s wedding ceremony.  I’ll admit I was a bit overwhelmed during the first half hour of the film, but when I realized that this is a classic example of ensemble casting – and when I turned on the English subtitles for the English lines – everything started to fall into place.  I might not have every character’s name down pat, but by the end, I knew who was interested in whom and how the conclusion benefited which person and why.  Everything comes out in the wash.

  

The romance in Monsoon Wedding was rather lovely.  Although overshadowed by the focus on Aditi’s wedding and her angst about an arranged marriage and her ex, my favorite of the multiple romantic plotlines was easily that of inept wedding planner Dubey and household maid Alice.  Aditi’s family is most definitely upper middle class, if not upper class, and this was the one part of the story that dared delve into class distinctions in India.  Dubey is shown to live in a tiny apartment with a nagging mother, and Alice is the maid.  Watch her face when she first accidentally bumps into Dubey and he says “Forgive me.”  You can read her shock that she wasn’t blamed for the accident, that it wasn’t assumed it was her fault.  Right from that very first moment, I knew how this romance would blossom, but I didn’t care that it was already spelled out.  I wanted to watch these two, whose lives were definitely a bit harder and rougher than Aditi’s family, find their little bit of happiness.  The fact that Aditi’s family includes them in their own wedding ceremony at the end of the movie is heartwarming.

Like every decent romantic dramedy out there, there is more than a whiff of the fairy tale in Monsoon Wedding.  Things wrap up a little too nicely, especially in Aditi’s plot line, to be believable.  At all.  Not every plot line is based on romance, but even in the more serious story line, things seem to resolve a little too nicely.  But you know what?  I’m okay with that.  I wasn’t expecting hard-hitting realism in a story about an Indian upper class wedding.  It’s nice, every now and then, to bid adieu to any semblance of real life and live in a world where everyone gets their happy ending.  Like I said, I used to subsist on a cinematic diet of nothing but films like this.  I welcome the fairy tale, the fantasy, the happy ending.  

  

And yet what really makes Monsoon Wedding work is that it is a fairy tale masquerading as a real life story.  There is a great blend of the two, and although the story tiptoes near the borders of Bollywood excess, it never pushes over the edge.  Sweet without being sickening and with just enough emotional poignancy to make it feel substantial, Monsoon Wedding achieves its goal.  It’s diverting, escapist, well-made fun. 

Arbitrary Rating: 8/10