Departed review is up.
Saw Babel the other night. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu was in attendance. Very smart, funny, thoughful guy. He does not make easy films. I had the same reaction to Babel that I had to 21 Grams, namely that I’ll have to chew on it for at least a week before I have anything intelligent to say about it.
That said, I’ll launch into something anyway. I feel that it’s his best film to date. 21 Grams may seem more complex, but at its heart I think it’s simpler, or at least isn’t trying to accomplish quite as much. Babel seems much simpler than 21 Grams, but I think it’s actually doing a lot more. Okay, that probably wasn’t all that intelligent, but I warned you.
Some other initial thoughts, notes…
- - Bad things happen to you in Iñárritu films. Very bad things.
- - Iñárritu isn’t very interested in why these things happened. It could be random chance or your unbelievably bad judgment.
- - What he is interested in is how you react, go through grief, suffer, deal, cope, etc.
- - Okay, he is a little interested in why these things happen, but in a “butterfly effect” kind of way.
- - Iñárritu says this is the end of a trilogy that began with Amores Perros and continued with 21 Grams.
- - He says the tie that binds in these films is parents and children, though I don’t remember much of that in 21 Grams.
- - There is a lot of that in Babel.
I saw the film with upyernoz, and he, too, is still sorting it out.
Oh, and Kevin e-mailed me the correct answer to yesterday’s trivia question. Michael Douglas’ first Oscar was a Best Picture Oscar for producing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Incidentally, he, bombippy and freewilliamsburg.com were nice enough to post links to my new film (or, in Kevin’s case, the film itself).
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