Babel “Japanese” Movie Review

March 8th, 2011 | Author: Dan Savage

Babel is not exactly a Japanese movie. However, the film has many Japanese scenes and does offer opportunities for Japanese listening comprehension practice. I decided it wouldn’t be inappropriate to write a review for Savage Japan Move Reviews.

In the movie Babel, Rinko Kikuchi plays a traumatized Japanese deaf teenager.

Though there were a few good scenes for Japanese language students, as a movie overall I found Babel extremely unpleasant to watch and with no inspiring or significant message.

Babel is a sophisticated and polished production featuring flickers of loosely connected tragic stories from around the world. The stories as presented were fairly independent and did not feel so reliant on one another, and none of the stories left me feeling enlightened, educated, or significantly entertained.

The film was effective if its goal was to depress me and cause me to feel tremendous sorrow for the characters, especially the isolated and sad Japanese teenage deaf character. But I want more than that from a movie.

No matter how well produced, I need a movie to do more than just eat up my time. And if it’s only going to be a somewhat abstract and intentionally pointless artistic exercise, I certainly don’t want it to feed me endless emotional trauma with no reward.

My own humble film project in development now features a deaf character that I’m trying to cast with a deaf actress. It’s interesting and helpful for me to study how deaf characters are portrayed in movies. The deaf character in Babel was played skillfully by Rinko Kikuchi, a hearing actress. Being able to observe how her deaf character was integrated into the film did add some appeal for me during my viewing of Babel.

Brad Pitt in his Golden Globe nominated performance in the movie Babel.

Brad Pitt in a small and subdued role was nominated for a Golden Globe Best Suppporting Actor award for his performance in Babel.

The talent of those involved with this production is undeniable, and perhaps some will enjoy this film for the first-rate performances and outstanding overall production quality. The talent, skill, and hard work required to get this movie made is admirable, but to make a good film, you need a good story. Very loosely connected snippets of ideas do not make a good story. This is no Crash by a long shot.

It’s been a while since I viewed the movie Crash and I don’t really remember it that well. But I recall the stories wrapping up nicely, fitting together and bringing a satisfying resolution to the viewer. And most importantly… I remember being entertained.

Babel is so effective with its seeming intent to depress the viewer, I was cringing in fear thinking they were going to take the Japanese girl’s story into even darker and much more tragic terrain. The whole film was so negative and joyless that I could only expect it to become more depressing as the stories wore on. Thankfully the film did not become quite as tragic as its momentum suggested it might, but this is an extremely emotionally unpleasant movie to watch. That was no doubt the intention of the makers, but why do I need to see such a painful and purposeless thing? I only have so many hours to live on this planet. I do not wish to waste them with tortuous films that offer me little for my emotional expense.

I don’t mind being manipulated and dragged around by my emotions at a movie theater. Some might argue that is the objective of all good movies. But give me something more to go home with than just the unpleasant aftertaste of pain and suffering.

Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan as seen in the movie Babel.

A busy intersection in the Shibuya neighborhood in Tokyo, Japan. Cate Blanchett can be seen here on the monitors as a segue assist from the Morroco story to the Japanese story in the movie Babel.

For Japanese Language Students

I’ve decided to give Babel a listening comprehension practice rating of Moderate because the scenes in modern day Tokyo may be of interest to Japan enthusiasts and there is some reasonably paced Japanese dialogue that provides good listening opportunities for beginner Nihongo students.

Babel gets 2 Siberians instead of 1 only because of its high production quality.