Babel-On
--Saw two flicks this weekend: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Babel (Paramount Vantage, 2006) and Yimou Zhang’s Curse of the Golden Flower (Sony Pictures Classics, 2006). Those of you who follow things like the 64th Annual Golden Globes already know that Babel took home the crown for Best Motion Picture – Drama, beating out Bobby (MGM, 2006), The Departed (Warner Bros., 2006), Little Children (New Line, 2006), and The Queen (Miramax, 2006). Now, I ain’t a certified film critic, but I’ll criticize anything, and lemme say this, Babel was not the one. Granted, I haven’t seen all of the films on this list, word on Sunset was that Bobby was a mess, and I gotta say, director (?!) Emilio Estevez doesn’t inspire the most confidence, and The Queen just ain’t my cup of tea (so to speak). The Departed was a sick film – you can’t mess with Scorsese, and all the hype about the performances of Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Alec Baldwin was well-founded. Unfortunately Jack Nicholson’s caricatured character and the story’s all-too-tightly wound twists and turns were a bit too much for me to swallow (not to mention that it was a remake) making this movie a highly polished action adventure that was too close to pulp fiction for me to really get behind it. (I like my gangsta flicks a bit more conflicted.) And Little Children, well, I ain’t even think to see it, but I’m always down for some sexual intrigue and just checking out the trailer makes me think this film may just be messy enough to hold my interest…
But back to the point at hand. Ask me: Babel was retarded. This is a film that’s beautifully made and well-acted but of limited use: if you have a hard time thinking of a world existing beyond your block, go see this movie. The settings – predominantly Morocco, Mexico, and Japan – are a good reminder that there are a million, or make that 6 billion, ways to live your life on this planet. And the majority of the people out there aren’t even thinking about 22s. Only other reason to see this flick: if you have a completely ass-backward grasp of the decision making process. By the third or fourth completely insane decision by one of the film’s main characters (somewhere at about the 2 hour point in a 2 1/2 hour film), I decided that I’ve learned enough from my own bad decisions that I had no need to watch some fictional asshole prove how much of an asshole he could be. And I walked out, which at $11 a ticket I don’t do lightly. This is another case of American audiences/establishment over-hyping a film with some global consciousness simply because we’re so ignorant on the subject that if someone rolls out a globe and points to it we’re all like, oh, damn, the Earth is round. Buy a book, pay attention to the news, and start taking this type of “we’re so aware” crap to task.
As for Curse of the Golden Flower, this was a cool flick that admittedly ain’t for everyone. Before this, Zhang was behind the lens for both Hero (Miramax, 2004) and House of Flying Daggers (Sony Pictures Classics, 2004), and if you saw either of those films, you know what you’re getting with Curse: beautiful, elaborate set pieces, all sorts of Imperial China intrigue, some impressively choreographed slow-mo fight scenes, and massive armies raining arrows and spears and grappling hooks and whatever else onto each other. Curse was a bit heavier on the Chinese metaphors – loyalty to the family, mother and father/state (pretty much in that order) – than the previous two films so there’s a bit more drama and less action. But if you’re down for it, and you still have a soft spot for the Wu-Tang Clan and the Shaw Brothers films that inspired them, you won’t be disappointed.
Back 2 the Basics:
Return to the 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Shaw, 1980)
de.licio.us
digg
Furl
Reddit
YahooMyWeb
Comments
1.
D.E.Garrett says:
In Babels defense the movie was about how the American media distorts the truth. Two little boys playing with a gun and accidentally shooting someone. Turned into a terrorist attack. A woman who had been working here for years . Didn't try to help her situation at all by trying to attain legal citizenship. Was so stupid to think she could take two little white children across the border and come back. If you had to sneek over here in the first place.What makes you think you can just come back over here all LA DEE DA. The Asian chick may have been deaf But you understood her pain any way. Oh' allow me to back track for a moment. The American Embassy didn't give two cares about Americans who were the victims of this terrorist act. Now maybe if it were a gangsta film or a movie with a bunch of senceless violence you would have graspped it. We're not all ignorant maybe it's just you.
02/07/2007 at 3:10 AM
2.
bananaskin says:
hm. i don't know whether to go see the movie(s) or read this over and over.
01/17/2007 at 3:09 AM