The Great Movies III

Louis Malle was a pioneer of the French New Wave. His Elevator to the Gallows (1958) followed Jeanne Moreau through Paris using available light and a camera on a bicycle, which were then revolutionary techniques. His The Lovers (1958) and Zazie in the Metro (1960) were simultaneous with the other early New Wave films. Later in his career, he made powerful but more conventional narrative films like Au Revoir les Enfants, Murmur of the Heart (1971), Pretty Baby (1978), and Atlantic City (1980). His Lacombe, Lucien (1974), about a working-class youth who falls in with the Nazis, may have been inspired in part by the character of Joseph, the kitchen helper in Au Revoir. As he gained worldwide success, Malle fell out of favor with some French critics because his films were popular and accessible, and also because he married Candice Bergen, although their love was true and she was his rock as he died in 1995 of lymphoma. Until the end, he was willing to experiment, as in My Dinner with Andre (1981), and the remarkable Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), a film about a rehearsal that Stanley Kauffmann thinks is the best adaptation of Chekhov ever filmed.

It is difficult to say exactly what Malle thought Julien's role (or his own) was in the capture of the Jewish students. In the film, a Nazi enters the classroom and demands to know if there are any Jews present. Julien unintentionally betrays Jean. I wrote in my original review: "Which of us cannot remember a moment when we did or said precisely the wrong thing, irretrievably, irreparably? The instant the action was completed or the words were spoken we burned with shame and regret, but what we had done never could be repaired." Yes, but it is not clear that Julien is entirely responsible for Jean's capture. "They would have caught me, anyway," he tells Julien, giving him his treasured books.

The film ends in a long closeup of Julien, reminding us of the last shot of Truffaut's The 40o Blows, and we hear Malle's voice on the soundtrack: "More than forty years have passed, but I'll remember every second of that January morning until the day I die." After the speech ends, the camera stays on Julien's face for twentyfive more seconds, and on the soundtrack the piano is heard once again, this time quiet, sad, and correct.

England andAmerica are two countries separated by a common language.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

ven more separated are cultures that do not share languages, values, frames of reference, or physical realities. Babel weaves stories from Morocco, America, Mexico, and Japan, all connected by the thoughtless act of a child, and demonstrates how each culture works against itself to compound the repercussions. It is the third and most powerful of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's trilogy of films in which the action is connected or influenced in invisible ways. Sometimes these are called "hyperlink films." After Amores Perros (2000) and az Grams (2003), it shows his mastery of the form, and it surprises us by offering human insight rather than obligatory tragedy.

Without revealing too much, let me chronologically piece together the stories. A Japanese businessman goes on a hunting trip in Morocco, and tips his guide with a rifle. The guide sells the rifle to a friend, who needs it to kill the jackals attacking his sheep. The friend's son shoots toward a tourist bus at a great distance. An American tourist is wounded. The tourist's Mexican nanny, in San Diego, is told to stay with their two children, but doesn't want to miss her son's wedding, and takes the children along with her to Mexico. Police enquiries about the Japanese businessman's rifle lead to consequences for his disturbed daughter.

Yes, but there is so much more to Babel than the through-line of the plot. The movie is not, as we might expect, about how each culture wreaks hatred and violence on another, but about how each culture tries to behave well, and is handicapped by misperceptions. Babel could have been a routine recital of man's inhumanity to man, but Inarritu, the writerdirector, has something deeper and kinder to say: when we are strangers in a strange land, we can bring trouble upon ourselves and our hosts. Before our latest Mars probe blasted off, it was scrubbed to avoid carrying Earth microbes to the other planet. All of the characters in this film are carriers of cultural microbes.

Consider the plight of Yussef (Boubker Air El Caid), the Moroccan boy. He lives happily with his family, tends sheep, plays with his brother Ahmed. Two alien microbes come into his world: a high-powered rifle and a tourist bus. Over a great distance, he childishly shoots at one with the other, and seriouslywounds Susan (Cate Blanchett), an American tourist. Her husband, Richard (Brad Pitt), demands doctors, ambulances, helicopters, but has to settle for a friendly local man who takes Susan into his home and summons what the village has in the way of medical care.