Saturday 13 December 2014

Babel (2006 Alejandro González Iñárritu)

Incredible team at work produces gripping, mesmerizing work of art.

Guillermo Arriaga's usual splintered storyline (sometimes tangentially) connects couple Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in Morocco with kids Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait el Caid; meanwhile the excellent Adriana Barraza is a Mexican nanny who (with nephew Gael Garcia Bernal) takes her charges Elle Fanning (of course!) and Nathan Gamble over the border; and Rinko Kikuchi (in the shortest skirt imaginable) is a desperately lonely deaf-mute Tokyo girl.... (Kôji Yakusho is the father.)

Incredible photography by Rodrigo Prieto is in different styles per story, e.g. Japan in anamorphic. Shot of Rinko on swing sensational as is closing track out (though disappointingly it turns out to be CGI). Also:
In terms of production design, Alejandro came up with using one color that would unify the story, and that color was red, with different shades of red for each section. For Morocco, we used a burnt red, with a little bit of umber, with different elements of the set and costumes. In Mexico, it was more of a primary red. And in Japan it’s more of a magenta-red. That was mostly achieved in the production design and wardrobe, but sometimes I applied it in the lighting, particularly in Japan. There’s a nightclub scene and I tried to paint gels on the lights, mostly using a combination of pink and green gels. - See more at: http://www.studiodaily.com/2006/06/d-p-rodrigo-prieto-on-shooting-babel/#sthash.jQzuF5p0.dpuf
Nightclub scene cutting from sound to silence is astonishing. Editors are Stephen Mirrione (Monuments Men, Hunger Games, Biutiful, The Ides of March. Leatherheads, Good Night and Good Luck, 21 Grams, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Ocean's 11-13 and Traffic) and Douglas Crise (who had been an assistant on many of these). Oscar and BAFTA-winning music by Gustavo Santaolalla.

Really terrific, though perhaps doesn't really add up to anything - dedicated to Iñárritu's children, who are perhaps the heart of the story.

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