बैबल

There's something unique to film, something relatively new in the word that has had profound effect on how we relate to art.

I call it noir, and define it a bit differently than the ordinary fellow, who thinks it has something to do with dark shadows and unhappy endings.

For me, noir is centered on the idea that the camera represents our eyes; that the nature of the world we see is bent by us watching it; and that the fate of the characters in that world are arranged — sometimes by extreme coincidence — for our purposes. The extreme photography is an indicator of that eye, and not necessarily a characteristic of noir. The camera might not be cinematically introduced, though of course it usually is.

I'm interested in the evolution of noir because its right at the edge of how we construct narrative, how we experiment with ideas and the stories we swim in. But what does a filmmaker do if that edge is always moving? Nearly every film I see that was made recently has some twist on the exploration — this is how genres mature today, and how we build tools to see ourselves.

For some reason, its the Spanish-speaking filmmakers that are doing the most interesting work in pushing this further, and effectively.

What Iñárritu does is especially adventurous. I particularly appreciate it because instead of rattling around in established cinematic conventions, he's trying to extend to new ones. Well, not precisely new, but newly recast. I like his idea of narrative braiding, but that's only part of his adventure on the edge. Its what he leaves out that matters. The absences aren't noticed because of the way things are sliced and respliced. And people think the story is important, which of course it isn't, just a pointer: here generally misinterpreted as miscommunication. Deliberately so, I think.

Those elided parts mean that we fill in more of the story than usual, that the container of a long form film can be bigger than usual. That it presents an open world. What's new for Iñárritu is the notion of referring to large sweeps of society as metaphors; and also new is the idea of lacing watchers in the story, here a disembodied global TeeVee audience. They "watch" but of course see almost nothing of what we see.

Its about listening transformed into watching; each of the three threads involves watching. The Japanese episode of course literally has watching as listening and the lasting trauma of what has been seen. The Morrocan episode is triggered by a boy spying on his nude, colluding sister, and on the Brad Pitt side about a reluctant busload of watchers. The Mexican story has a woman going to see her son's wedding and having trouble with being seen clumsily.

Sight. Made explicit of course by the cinematic flourishes, the deliberate differences in the three camera stances, whose differences penetrate to primitives beyond grain, light, stance to the soul of the eye. Its as if Iñárritu decided to create three of the most elementary braids of sight he possibly could with the notion that their cleanliness would allow them to braid into a larger container than any other film.

Its one of the most exciting things happening. Almost thankfully he underused Cate, who is one of the few actresses who could hint that everything other than her we see is in her mind. Almost thankfully he underplays the merger into one soul of three wonderful actresses.

Almost, but not quite thankfully, he only hints at the notion of detective work, three types of discovery.

Its delicate, good, rich, dangerous without seeming so.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.