| CROSSING THE LINE : 'Babel' [4/10] and 'Black Book' [7/10] |
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| Sunday, 14 January 2007 | |
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written for the next issue of Tribune magazine: CROSSING THE LINE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Babel [4/10] USA/Mexico 2006 Starring : Rinko Kikuchi, Brad Pitt Director : Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Black Book [7/10] Netherlands 2006 Starring : Carice Van Houten, Sebastian Koch Director : Paul Verhoeven ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WINNER of Best Director at last year's Cannes, and mentioned as a likely Oscar contender in various categories, Babel is the latest gruelling (142 minutes!) collaboration between director A Gonzalez Inarritu and scriptwriter Guillermo Arriaga. Like all of Arriaga's previous work (Gonzalez Inarritu's Amores Perros and 21 Grams; Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada), Babel is a chronological and geographical jumble - and this time the scale is international, global... perhaps even cosmic. We jump between three stories which, we quickly deduce, are all taking place at roughly the same time. The initial focus is on the travails of a tourist couple (Pitt, Cate Blanchett) in Morocco, after one of them is injured by a semi-stray bullet; we also witness the traumatic experiences of the pair's children (Elle Fanning, Nathan Gamble) back home in California who have been entrusted to the care of their Mexican housekeeper (Adriana Barraza); and then there's the painful post-adolescence of a hormonal Japanese teenager (Kikuchi) with severe hearing and speech difficulties, not to mention a tricky relationship with her widowed father (Koji Yakusho) - the latter not long returned, as it happens, from a hunting holiday in northern Africa... The fiercely topical, aggressively humanistic intentions behind the film are obvious - such a shame, then, about the execution. While the well-observed Japanese section might work just fine as a self-contained short, the Morocco and California 'tales' are fatally hamstrung by the wildly melodramatic way various members of the same small family endure situations of dire extremis at exactly the same time, for totally different reasons. As the picture goes on there's an ever-more-pervasive air of offputting, overwrought portentousness to the exercise: though acted with conviction throughout, Babel's many flaws end up easily outweighing its pleasures, which include Rodrigo Prieto's planet-hopping cinematography. It's very hard to approve of a film in which the shooting of a white Westerner is treated as an earthshatteringly traumatic event, whereas a similar but more serious incident involving a Moroccan lad is whizzed over with such unthinking haste. THIS week's other Oscar contender turns out to be much more worthy of Academy recognition than Gonzalez Inarritu's over-ambitious, over-cooked fable. While you feel every worthy second of Babel's 143 minutes, Paul Verhoeven's World War 2 epic Black Book - despite being two minutes longer - is so thunderously-paced that you won't have time or inclination to glance at your watch. The film is tipped as a likely Oscar candidate for the foreign-language category - where it would provide Verhoeven his first Academy nomination since his international breakthrough Turkish Delight back in 1974. This time next year, however, Black Book will be eligible for the 'major' categories - the most plausible (and deserving) candidate being Carice Van Houten as Best Actress. Not since the heyday of R.W. Fassbinder a Euro-production served as such a showcase for its female star: as Jewish Resistance-member Rachel Stein - a.k.a. Ellis De Vries - she sings, dances, romances ("a real Mata Hari... Greta Garbo in the flesh!"), and endures degradations worthy of Lars Von Trier's leading-ladies. She also provides the emotional and moral fulcrum of a head-spinningly twisty tale in which her character schemes her way into the affections of Amsterdam's Gestapo-chief Ludwig Muntze (Koch) - only to learn that not all Nazis are monsters, and not all Resistance-fighters are saints... These challenging, still-controversial ambiguities - and some amusingly 'frank' nudity - mark out Black Book as typical Verhoeven material, inviting viewers to delve beneath the glossy surfaces of what's ostensibly a conventionally 'well-made', well-appointed period-piece. Having endured a frustrating, enforced hiatus since 2000's critical/commercial disappointment Hollow Man, Verhoeven has now turned 'prodigal son' in style - with the most expensive Dutch film ever made (British, German and Belgian coin was also involved) - returning to settings he last covered in 1977's Soldier of Orange. Though perhaps a little too convoluted in its plotting, Black Book is a rousing page-turner of a movie which, while not quite up to the level of Verhoeven's greatest hits, signals the welcome return of a director who, at 68, has lost little of his power to entertain and provoke. Neil Young ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ BABEL : [4/10] : USA/Mexico 2006 : Alejandro GONZALEZ INARRITU : 143 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Kino Vic, Ljubljana (Slovenia), 24th November 2006 - public show (Ljubljana Film Festival - complimentary press ticket) original review BLACK BOOK : [7/10] : Zwartboek : Netherlands (Neth/Bel/Ger/UK) 2006 : Paul VERHOEVEN : 146 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Empire cinema, Bromsgrove (UK), 5th October 2006 - press show (CinemaDays event; review posted online January 14th 2007 in accordance with FDA embargo) |
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