OSCAR FOR BABEL

Mirabile dictu! I read in the Chronicle, the same paper wherein Mick LaSalle savaged it, that Alejandro Inniaritu’s BABEL is considered a potential Academy Award winner. Academy Award? Last year CRASH and this year BABEL? I haven’t watched the Academy Awards, except for an occasional illicit peek, for 35 years. Now, two good films in a row?

If this is not a cruel joke, I’m going to laugh anyway. I suppose minus Brad Pitt, an Oscar for BABEL would be impossible to contemplate. But as far as the film goes, he’s the least of it. His character is solid but a foil for the unknowns, players who generate the real interest. I couldn’t erase Koji Yakusho, the sex- driven deaf girl, from my mind even if I wanted to. And Adriana Barraza, the Mexican nanny was unforgettable… making a bad decision for a good reason with near-tragic consequences. The two “bubble dwelling” American children aren’t bad either and then there are the players from Morocco, riveting because Inniaritu has allowed them the freedom to be themselves. In this he recognizes and skillfully exploits the biggest secret emerging from the digital revolution. If a director can instill trust, relaxation and concentration and inspire strong feelings and commitment to expressivity, he can find the highest level of performance in people with no “acting” experience. ATANARJUAT: THE FAST RUNNER is one of many films which routinely prove this rebuke to acting schools and the star system.

Could it be possible that people are really getting sick of Hollywood and its inferior products? Could it be possible that real filmmakers as are found in places like Mexico, Iran, Taiwan and China might find a substantial audience in America? Is it possible that American filmmakers might learn to become culturally literate, put the work first and resist compromise? I look and wonder… solid progress or just a run of poker luck?

Citizen Cinema E4_VFX

In Citizen Cinema episode 4 we take a look at visual effects and how it is impacting our filmmaking process. Rob weighs in with a discussion on how he has used vfx in past productions and how they can integrate with character driven work. Michael also speaks with Kenji Kato of the Pixel Corps about their "digital guild", and the future of VFX as it relates to the indie filmmaker.

click here to download episode 4

BABEL

I have a lot of respect for Inniaritu, director of AMORES PERROS and 21 GRAMS, but was put off by the first few minutes of BABEL. They struck me as inert, like scenes from those films you're obligated to like because they were made in Dunnowistan somewhere. But then the three interlocking stories started to grip me and before I knew it I'd fallen off the precipice into a hellish world of clashing cultures and terrifying contradiction. Particularly impressive was the structure, book ending the somewhat convenient, but still gripping, stories of an American mother and father in crisis in Morocco at the same time their children are in danger in a Mexican/US border no man's land. The cultural sharp edges which cause both fear and unexpected solidarity in those who may have heard all the racial stereotypes but then get to live the real thing, are the true subject of these two accounts.

And in the middle story, a brilliant contrast, we see a different kind of frontier people fear to cross: the line between the deaf and those who hear. This story which shows the sexual anguish of a Japanese deaf girl who longs for love and sex with people across the sound border who seem so beautiful, easy in their ways, and, most of all, gifted with language creates a brilliant contrast to the first two accounts, which exist in more socially charged class and ethnic terms.

But all three stories about scary borders and contradictory frontiers are linked by another artist's device. A Japanese man, father of the deaf girl, whose wife shot herself (maybe with this same gun), gives a rifle to a guide during a hunting trip in Morocco, which a young boy later uses to shoot randomly into a passing tourist bus, hitting the mother of the children who are in jeopardy in Mexico. It's a literary device really, but it shows us that Inniaritu reads more than pulp fiction and understands the use of linking ironies. This unique structure shows us the geometry of mayhem we constantly face in a world threaded together in ways we don't expect and can't anticipate.

I emphasize the beauty of this wild, expressionist way of building art because of the opacity of critics who dismiss it. Unfortunately, these arbiters of conformity sell newspapers by providing safety from stories which catch people in uncomfortable paradoxes. When this happens transcendent art gets ignored in favor of simplistic formulas and genre bromides. The only critique I would level against BABEL, a film I recommend to everyone, is that it elects to choose, at the end, a different kind of safety, one of reconciliation fueled by stirring program music and admittedly impressive cinematography to offer... is it hope? I was moved but in retrospect, I felt that Inniaritu was letting his us off the hook.

I think that the true Babels exist today in places like Afghanistan and Iraq where seriously crazy people are allowed to be clerics and patriots of a medieval zealotry which can destroy centuries old Buddhist statues, set fire to entire oil fields as an act of political zeal, strap on explosives and kill will nilly anybody as proof of faith. The victims of this madness are, as usual, rank and file people who, for the most part, would prefer to be left alone with their families, their thoughts, their local ways of working, worshipping, and measuring the weights and measures of birth, death and what matters in between.

But Muslim cultures allow little power to the everyday man and woman. Tribal histories from the time of Mohammed emphasize obedience and rigid social hierarchies. And the predations of the Ottoman Empire, and the colonial era after World War I when European powers called the shots, provide little room for populist causes. In these places people are not saved by plot devices and touching refrains. In my view the citizens of Babel have lost the gift of coherence due to the hubris of their leaders. I would have liked BABEL better if Inniaritu had allowed his tragic instincts to play out. Hope, conciliation and redmemption are tricky categories. We already hope. Better we know the truth.