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Leonard Heldreth
Foreign directors get nomination nod
Our subjects this month are three mainstream, Oscar-nominated films
by directors who exemplify the Mexican renaissance in film-making,
plus a film by two French brothers whose films keep winning prizes
at Cannes.
Babel
Babel completes a trilogy of films by Mexican director Alejandro González
Iñárritu and his writing partner, Guillermo Arriaga.
Amores Perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006) each tell stories
of three or more groups of people, follow nonsequential story lines
and connect the stories through a vehicular or other type of accident.
The themes of the stories attempt to reinforce each other.
Arriaga last year wrote the screenplay for The Three Burials of Melquiades
Estrada, which also rearranges the narrative order of the story. Since
Iñárritu and Arriaga have quarreled, Babel may end their
creative relationship. That’s probably for the best, since their
films have declined steadily, with their most recent being the easiest
to understand, but also the least impressive.
Babel tells four stories across three continents and several languages,
including Spanish, Berber, Japanese, English and sign language. One
story tells of two Moroccan brothers whose father gives them a recently
purchased rifle to shoot coyotes and protect their goats. Trying out
the rifle but unaware of its range, they accidentally put a bullet
through the window of a tour bus.
This careless act brings repercussions from the police, who think
they are dealing with terrorists. The second story tells of a couple
from California on the tour bus and what happens to them when the
bullet strikes the wife in her shoulder. No hospital is near, the
other tourists fear for their lives, a helicopter cannot be sent until
the United States and Morocco can agree on the use of airspace and
the wife is bleeding badly.
The third story follows the small children of the same American couple
as their housekeeper takes them to Mexico illegally to her son’s
wedding. They start back late at night with her nephew driving and
drinking, and problems erupt at the border.
The fourth story, and the least connected to the others, tells of
a teenaged deaf-mute girl in Osaka (Japan) who is searching desperately
for sexual experience while dealing with her affliction and the aftermath
of her mother’s suicide. The film cuts back and forth between
these stories, and by the end of the film, their time order and the
ways they connect have become clear.
All of the stories show misunderstandings through lack of communication,
ethnic and cultural conflicts, bureaucratic aggravations and children
in danger. All have exceptional acting across the board, from first-time
actors to international stars like Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael
Garcia Bernal and Koji Yakusho. All have powerful, moving scenes of
human emotion and suffering. Yet, somehow, in spite of all these positive
qualities, I kept checking the time and waiting for the movie to end.
The movie, as a whole, did not engage me; I would just become interested
in one segment, and the director would cut to another story. For example,
the stories of the Moroccan boys and the Japanese teenager both interested
me, but there wasn’t room to develop them sufficiently.
Another problem is the connections between the stories should bring
them together in ways that make the whole greater than the parts,
and it simply doesn’t work—for me and a significant number
of other reviewers. One of the obvious themes is the way all people
and events are in some way connected—the theory that “butterfly’s
wings in South America can cause a tornado in Kansas.”
While there may be some truth to the idea, we can’t do much until
we find out which butterflies can lead to tornadoes and which are
just flapping their wings in the jungle.
In Babel there are few deliberately malicious acts. Among the acts,
malicious or otherwise, that cause problems in the film, only the
bureaucratic ones may be open for remedy. Should a Japanese hunter
never give his rifle to a Moroccan guide for fear he will sell it
to a neighbor whose sons will accidentally shoot someone? Should all
Mexican aliens be automatically sent back to their country of origin?
Should people never vacation in Third World countries for fear of
being injured and made uncomfortable? If we aren’t being entertained,
what should we learn from viewing these episodes?
The director clearly is concerned about how globalization is aggravating
traditional problems of communication. The intrusion of the press
and the U.S. government’s attempt to turn an accident into a
terrorist act make the situation worse. (In each story, television
news programs report on the accidental shooting.)
Fortunately, the photography by Rodrigo Prieto and the individual
scenes and characters are impressive enough to justify watching the
film. The director is excellent in handling the details, but he just
can’t get the larger structure together—maybe no one could.
Perhaps he should remember the story that gave him the title. When
people in their pride try to build something beyond their ability,
it may fall down all around them. The movie Babel, while not falling
down, certainly shows some structural stresses and cracks.
Viewers who liked Crash will probably enjoy Babel, but for some of
us, the movie illustrates that even when both the director and the
audience do their best, the communication may not be as effective
as both would like. It’s probably been this way since the Tower
of Babel.
Babel was nominated for Oscars for best picture, best director, best
screenplay, best supporting actress (Adriana Barraza) and best supporting
actress (Rinko Kikuchi); it won an Oscar for best score. Top
Children of Men
Alfonso Cuarón has made four previous films: A Little Princess
(1995), Great Expectations (1998), Y Tu Mamá También
(2001) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). Nothing
in these films anticipates the bleak and angry stance of Children
of Men.
Based on the book of the same title by P.D. James, the film is set
in 2027 in an England that, like the rest of the world, is coming
apart. The critical catastrophe is that humans have become infertile;
no children have been born for nearly twenty years, and no one knows
why.
In the face of this impending end of humanity, order has broken down,
violence has erupted and governments are surviving by enforcing totalitarian
regulations. England has closed all contact with what is left of the
outside world, and all immigrants are now illegal and are being herded
into detention camps. As the film opens, the siege of Seattle is entering
day 1000; the youngest human being (a boy named Diego, slightly older
than eighteen) has been stabbed to death accidentally in a riot; and
Theo (Clive Owen), the main male character in the film, comes out
of a café with a cup of coffee, walks a few feet and is nearly
knocked down by a bomb that goes off in the café he has just
left. Although this is a film of ideas, it also is one of nearly nonstop
action and taut suspense.
Later the same afternoon Theo suddenly is abducted on the street,
hooded, shoved into a van and taken to an empty room where his former
wife, Julian (Julianne Moore), now a member of the resistance, offers
to pay him for forged papers to help a black immigrant girl, Kee (Clare-Hope
Ashitey) leave the country. When Theo gets the papers from his cousin
Nigel, high up in the current corrupt government, he finds out he
has to accompany the girl; he also finds out she is pregnant, and
she and the baby must be smuggled out of the country before the government
finds them or the resistance uses them for a rallying point. The rest
of the film follows Theo and Ashitey as they try to reach the seashore
and sanctuary with the mysterious Human Project and its ship, “Tomorrow.”
The film’s strengths are its powerful action scenes and its portrait
of a world going to hell. Jasper, a retired political cartoonist,
has hidden himself away on a little farm where he cares for his wife
(made catatonic by torture fifteen years before), smokes good dope
and plays air guitar with his old rock records. Jasper, with long
grey hair, is played by Michael Caine in a great performance.
Theo’s cousin Nigel (Danny Huston), at the other end of the economic
food chain, has barricaded himself in fortified towers, where he drinks
fine wine and admires the paintings and sculptures he has salvaged
from museums around the world. On the streets, the aliens are herded
into cages and then into buses that say “Homeland Security”
on them; then they go to coastal concentration camps.
The clothes these people wear are the same as we wear today, their
cars are only slightly different, but the schools are abandoned, garbage
is piling up and other services will break down in a few years because
no person will be young enough to keep them going. The rebels and
the established government are fighting to control the country for
the few years that remain. It’s as though the irrationalities,
horrors and divisions of Bagdad and Iraq have spilled over and engulfed
the world. Cuarón’s picture of a disintegrating world
is the most realistic you are likely to see on film.
It’s hard not to see some Christian images in the film, such
as the birth of a baby resurrecting a dying world. Kee acknowledges
she doesn’t know who the father is, and several characters, including
Theo, mutter “Jesus Christ,” when they realize Kee is pregnant
or carrying a baby. Then there’s a scene where the rebel-government
war comes to a stop as Kee and the baby walk past. Fortunately, the
film doesn’t turn into an allegory, the symbolism is lightly
done and the images may be more archetypal than Christian.
Children of Men is a powerful, sometimes amazing film, and its originality
is striking. Children of Men was nominated for Oscars for best editing
and best cinematography. Top
Pan’s Labyrinth
Mexican-born director Guillermo Del Toro has made several Hollywood
films—Mimic (1997), Blade 2 (2002) and Hellboy (2004). In between
these, he has made two Spanish-language films—Cronos (1993) and
The Devil’s Backbone (2001)—and now Pan’s Labyrinth.
Del Toro sees his last two Spanish-language films as companion pieces–both
are set in Spain during its civil war, both have children as protagonists
and both blend reality and fantasy to comment on Franco’s fascism.
The Devil’s Backbone is set in 1939, and Pan’s Labyrinth
in 1944, just as Franco was solidifying his hold on Spain while fascism
was being defeated in the rest of Europe.
Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) and her pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) travel
by car caravan to join Ofelia’s stepfather, Capt. Vidal (Sergi
López of Dirty Pretty Things), who exemplifies the vicious
repression and mechanical behavior of fascist Spain.
At the military outpost, Ofelia encounters a large insect that leads
her to an ancient labyrinth that circles down into the earth; there
she encounters a faun who tells her she is the lost daughter of the
King of the Underworld. To prove her heritage, she must carry out
three tasks before the next full moon.
In the meantime, Ofelia’s mother is having bleeding complications
with the pregnancy, and housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verdú
of Y Tu Mamá También) is helping the rebels in the surrounding
countryside.
Ofelia’s adventures in the magic world and her problems in the
real world gradually become intertwined until the two worlds overlap,
and she uses magic chalk to draw a door into her stepfather’s
room. The two worlds are exemplified at the end of the film in dual
images—one of Ofelia walking in golden light in the underworld
and the other of Mercedes weeping, heartbroken, in the cold light
of a fascist regime.
The sets are constructed using Druidic symbols, reaching back to pre-Christian
circles and descending spirals, and the integration of the sets with
the everyday reality of the army camp is quite successful.
Del Toro uses liquids of various viscosities to exemplify the messier
side of the magic world—Ofelia crawls through deep mud in the
toad’s lair and wipes the thick slime from his tongue off her
hand and face; her mother bleeds profusely, as do other characters;
and warm milk is used to hold and activate a magic root.
Most impressive are the “creatures” that populate the labyrinth—the
faun himself, with great curving horns and cloven hooves; the pale,
child-eating guardian whose eyes are in the palms of his hands; the
insect that changes itself into a fairy by looking at a picture in
a book; the giant toad with a key in its belly; and the baby-like
mandrake root which heals the mother. All are original in concept
and frightening enough to generate considerable suspense as Ofelia
encounters them.
The only problem with the film is its “R” rating, which
prevents children from seeing it, but the graphic scenes of torture,
murder and bloodshed easily justify the rating and will make many
adults cringe.
Pan’s Labyinth is the most impressive live fantasy film of the
year; anyone who enjoys fantasy will not want to miss it; the movie
is in Spanish with English subtitles. Pan’s Labyrinth was nominated
for Oscars for best original screenplay, best score and best foreign
film; it won Oscars for best cinematography and best makeup. Top
L’Enfant
(The Child)
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, middle-aged Belgian film makers, have
made earlier movies that have received high acclaim at Cannes—Le
Fils (The Son) (2002) and Rosetta (1999)—and L’Enfant (The
Child) won the top award there in 2006.
The two brothers make films that focus on characters in bleak situations,
usually on or over the economic edge, and empathize with what few
choices these people have in their severely limited circumstances.
Bruno (Jeremie Renier) is a small-time thief, choosing to live on
what he can steal rather than find work. His girlfriend Sonia (Deborah
Francois) has just given birth to their son, but Bruno sees the child
as currency and sells him to an adoption ring. When he sees the effect
his action has on Sonia, he tries to get the child back, but matters
have become complicated. The rest of the film tracks Bruno as he tries
to straighten out the mess of his life.
The Dardenne brothers are cinematic purists—they simply observe
without comment or explanation. No reasons are given for Bruno’s
complete lack of morality, his child-like exuberance and his charm.
Little is given about his past and nothing about Sonia’s—the
camera just observes them as they do what they do in the surroundings
in which they find themselves. Strangely enough, the process works
here, as it did in the earlier film, The Son, and the result is a
compelling movie about people we might run from if we met them on
the street.
Part of the film’s attraction is that it is so unpredictable—these
people do not behave as we expect people to behave. Although the title
may appear to refer to the baby, it also obviously refers to Bruno,
who has the emotional and sociological maturity of a child.
While such people can survive by their wit and charm for a while,
the odds against them are great, and the film ends with Bruno and
Sonia weeping together, even though the baby is safe.
I postponed watching L’Enfant because I wasn’t sure I wanted
to see the baby mistreated, but the baby does all right, and I found
Bruno and Sonia to be surprisingly engaging characters to watch, even
though I found out little about them.
The Dardenne brothers have remembered what many filmmakers seem to
forget—people who go to movies are voyeurs, and if the characters
are interesting, we will watch. L’Enfant is in French with English
subtitles. Top
—Leonard G. Heldreth
Editor’s Note: All films reviewed are available on DVD or VHS
from local stores.
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