Babel

By: The Dude

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Mohamed Akhzam
Rating: 2.5 out of 5

If I recall from my halcyon days at the Collingwood Church o’ Christ as a lad, there was someplace in The Bible called Babel. Or was it a building? Maybe it was a fella? What do I know?  Anyways, there’s this dude named Nimrod, whose name must have meant ‘silly bugger’ seeings as though the fella that lives in the unit under me is both a nimrod and a silly bugger.

I remember this one time when I was having a party – as The Dude likes to do – and the nimrod downstairs decides that things should quiet the hell down at around 11.30 in the pm… whoa. I’m getting off topic here.

Anyway, being well versed and intellectual and all that, I was in the midst of telling you all ‘bout this Nimrod, who decides to build a tower to God. Now, God gets a might miffed about this, yeah. I mean, there He is, sitting up in heaven planning for to come down and get up in Jim Carey’s face in a movie about some guy named Bruce, when this Nimrod comes a-knockin’ on Heaven's door – very much like the story I was sidetracked into earlier.

So God, being God and a tad on the cheesed off side, decides to send the tower work site into utter disarray. So first up, The Almighty cancels all overtime bonuses which would normally bring the unions down on him like a ton o’, but what with Him being God and all, and as it’s the dawn of time, the unions ain’t been organised yet.

So then God performs one of them there miracles you often read about in The Good Book. He makes everyone start talking a different language, yeah! So there some bloke is asking for more bricks to be delivered, but the fella on the other end of the phone is like: “Man, you talking Chinese brother.”

Anyway, with all these people stammering some and generally not understanding each other, the tower to heaven gets abandoned and everyone goes their separate ways – hence we have different cultures.

“What for with the Bible lesson, Dude” you may be asking.

"Well folks," I retort stroking my chin, "that set up explains the general gist of this here Babel flick."

What we have is a series of stories where some folks are in a scenario whereby their side of events cannot be communicated. Some are deaf, some are branded troublemakers, some are just American tourists so most everyone simply wants to steer clear of them.

It’s a thinker this one. The Dude’s not sure if he liked it cause when I saw some kids with a gun and Brad Pitt, I thought we were gonna have an action shoot out, but instead we got illegal Mexicans, naked Japanese teens, little kids in the desert, and did I happen to mention naked Japanese teens?

Rumour at DVDetails HQ suggests this is the third part of the trilogy, but if so, where is the triumphant king, Jedi, or pirate??

I have to admit… Babel damn near made me angry for some reason. Maybe that’s the point. Respect.

Extra features: The usual making of doco and yak-trak, and a video diary of Alejandro González Iñárritu. Nothing great to be frank.

Verbatim:
Hassan: “It's almost new. Three hundred cartridges. The guy who gave it to me said you can hit as far as three kilometres.”

In a word: Hmmm?