Cannes. Babel.

"Tense, relentless and difficult to watch at times, Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel is an emotionally shattering drama in which a simple act of kindness leads to events that pierce our veneer of civilization and bring on the white noise of terror," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Ray Bennett. "Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael García Bernal give committed ensemble performances alongside seasoned character performers and non-actors as the story ranges from Morocco to San Diego to Tokyo."

For Jeffrey Wells, it's "a lock to win the Palmes D'Or. Everyone seems to be feeling this, spreading it around. If it doesn't win, fine - it'll still be an incredibly vivid and brilliant film - but I'll be greatly surprised."

Updated through 5/28.

Meanwhile, the AP knows why Pitt was a no-show.

Update: Time Out's Geoff Andrew is the first dissenter I've spotted; he "can't help feeling that [Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo] Arriaga are reaping diminishing returns from their particular style of interwoven narratives. Occasionally the script feels a touch contrived in its efforts to keep all the balls in the air at once, so that although you are left admiring the film's often brilliant technique, you're also aware that it lacks the freshness and visceral power of Amores Perros."

Variety's Todd McCarthy: "Effectively building dread and emotional tension as tragic incidents triggered by human stupidity and carelessness steadily multiply, this film, like 21 Grams in particular, employs a deterministically grim mindset in the cause of its philosophical aspirations, but is gripping nearly all the way."

Updates, 5/24: For Time, Mary and Richard Corliss "offer a he-said-she-said appraisal of this important and contentious movie, between two film folks who have been in Cannes, loving movies and arguing about them, for 33 years." She's pro; he plays devil's advocate. Together, they prove dialogues can make for great reviews.

Mike D'Angelo at Nerve: "For about an hour, while various balls remained suspended in midair, I found Babel completely engrossing... "But the film's second half, alas, is something of a letdown, as each strand devolves into contrived, self-important melodrama."

"Each story is full of the intensity of feeling — an unsettling and often potent combination of naturalism and melodrama — that is one of Mr González Iñárritu's hallmarks," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "The vision of Babel is a kind of tragic universalism, which its director summed up by revising Tolstoy. 'What makes us happy is different,' he said, 'but what makes us miserable is very, very similar.'"

The Hollywood Reporter's Anne Thompson interviews Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Cinematical's James Rocchi: "Babel may seem unfocussed and uneven at first, but in time you realize that every piece clicks - the three stories connect, the people in the stories connect, the actions of the present are explained by revelations about the past - with smooth elegance."

Premiere's Glenn Kenny: "[T]he picture is as overdetermined in its bleakness as any Hollywood blockbuster is in its putative kick-assness."

Updates, 5/25: Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian: "It is a bold film made with style and sweep, but it is also outrageously contrived, and some of the narrative is so offensively unreal it's almost in the Lars von Trier league."

"[D]ramatically involving and visually arresting," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir.

"Underlying this complex, ingenious story is a plea to acknowledge global inter-dependence," writes the Telegraph's David Gritten. "This troubled, tangled tale leaves victims and ruined lives, but somehow Iñárritu and Arriaga pluck resolution from it."

Updates, 5/26: Sheila Johnston in the Independent: "Iñárritu essays big, self-important themes about cultural difference and miscommunication but, for all its doomy overtones, it's a contrived, unconvincing work."

Geoff Pevere in the Toronto Star: "Dedicated to his own two children, Iñárritu's movie struck a common chord even with a crowd as culturally dispersed as the one in Cannes. 'The problem is not language,' Iñárritu said of the motivating concept behind the film. 'The problem is the preconceptions we have of one another that keep us apart.'"

Updates, 5/28: Jason Solomons in the Observer: "None of it rings true, and the Tokyo storyline is particularly tenuous. Yet the film is dazzling in its technical virtuosity, shot on various film stocks by Rodrigo Prieto and underlined by Gustavo Santaolalla's score... But I didn't feel anything here. There's such a level of artifice at play that the messages about nations misunderstanding each other, jumping to conclusions about terrorists and guns being generally bad come clumsily."

For Jonathan Romney, writing in the Independent, it "feels manipulative and forced. One French critic complained that the film summed up the current parlous state of world cinema; indeed, this self-important exercise is world cinema in the same way that Peter Gabriel is world music."

Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE: "Some critics are beginning to tire of the Iñárritu/Ariaga model: the mixed narratives all linked by a single tragedy (Perros, 21 Grams) and the 'profound' human themes and fragmented story that eventually emerges whole like a self-satisfied light-bulb in the viewer's mind. Still, there is no denying the power of Babel, the assured photography and editing, the gripping stories, and the full commitment of the actors (Cate Blanchett and a wrinkled Brad Pitt as tourists in Morocco deliver fine, anguished performances)."

"[O]f all the movies I have seen in the festival, particularly the American and English-speaking ones, "Babel" is the one that will matter in the American and international movie market, when it is released in the fall," writes Emanuel Levy. Via Jeffrey Wells.

Posted by dwhudson at May 23, 2006 10:18 AM