required reading

In the absence of much reading (it genuinely distresses me that I haven't read much recently), perhaps it's time to turn attention to films, and widen the remit of these entries.

Babel, the Oscar-nominated film from Inarritu, provoked hot argument on the way home from the cinema, with friends etc pronouncing it to be slow, heavy-handed, and bleak. (Sorry if I have misrepresented any of you: Nic and Niall, and Phil; I know that you didn't all dislike the film.)

Personally, I found the film left me feeling emotionally drained. I thought the cinematography was beautiful, the emotions raw and real, and many of the characters sensitively and exceptionally well portrayed.

So, on to the three criticisms...

I don't see why a film being slow is a problem, unless the pace doesn't suit the story that is being told. Unhurried storytelling allows us to reflect on the story and attempt to work out its resolution: a particularly engaging task in a film whose narrative pivots around connections between isolated people at the four corners of the globe. It allows us to absorb the atmosphere, which is why Babel feels particularly wounding, given that we have around two and a half hours to soak up the sense of alienation, frustration, and desperation throughout. And, in some cases, it allows us to experience what the characters themselves are feeling, to empathise. This is something Inarritu does exceptionally well: so we feel the same intoxicating disorientation that Chieko, the deaf-mute Japanese girl, feels in a nightclub, as deafening sound alternates with deafening silence; we feel the frustration of Richard as he waits in a Moroccan village for any kind of help or news to arrive for his injured wife as we are returned to the scene time and time again, to find the story progress by a couple of inches; we feel Amelia's sense of loss as she is deprived the sight of the two children she cares for - after she leaves them, sheltering under a bush where they are lost in the desert in order to find help, we never see them again. This is how Babel comes to have such an enormous emotional impact, and feels, in the true sense of the word, so cathartic.

Heavy-handed, then? Yes, in parts. Seeing a TV report of the events in Morocco on a small Japanese TV, for example, or the way in which our attention is drawn persistently to Richard and Susan's back story of a child lost to SIDS, or the occasional stereotypes: self-centred, mean British man; egotistical American; crazy, gun-firing Mexican. This seems slightly unfair, however, since the film is far more subtle than your average blockbuster, and certain parts of the story are fairly nicely underplayed, such as the American children's sense of wonder in Mexico and Chieko's entire storyline. Heavy-handed? Did anyone watch The Day After Tomorrow last night, littered with adverts for Channel 4's global warming programming ?! Heavy-handed is putting three exclamation marks after your statements; I'm sure Babel only uses one. Some people just don't like exclamation marks at all.

And Babel is bleak, emotionally tiring to watch. I can't argue with that, though I'm not sure it is a criticism. Time Out's Dave Calhoun comments "If misery is your pornography, ‘Babel’ is your holy grail." This is a fair point, and probably reveals something horribly wrong with my psyche. However,  it is interesting that Babel achieves a feeling of melancholy despite having characters that are thoroughly flawed and sometimes alienating. And, Mr Calhoun, someone did indeed film "a similar plot of butterfly effects that saw disparate actions and events causing unforeseen happiness, love and comedy across the globe", and it was actually quite good. It was called "Le Battement d'ailles du papillon", ummm "The Beating of Butterfly Wings". But it didn't really deal with themes such as terrorism, immigration, the bond between parents and children, dependence and independence, and the universality of basic emotions. Nor was it so competently acted and so beautifully filmed and edited.