rivera66_99

The last half hour of this movie the only things I kept thinking were stuff like "Oh, yes, this actor hasn't had his share of crying, yet", or "Well, the 'gun link' was not supposed to be more meaningful if ultimately, this movie is about show you 'human emotions'"... I don't say that BABEL doesn't have its strenghts. Acting (every single acting scene) is fine; cinematography is spectacular; the beduines story in Marokko is truly tragical and politically instructive - but the WHOLE thing is just too much. After all, Inarritú is aiming at emotional manipulation at all costs, taking everything just as a pretext for that aim. That's why in the end, BABEL for me was just a far too long piece of pieces, a presumptious sort of emotional terrorism. 5/10.

Let's face it: Tennessee Williams was more a very clever and, at his time, fashionable author than a genius. "Descending Orpheus" shows both his cleverness (in creating, for instance, gripping and effective situations) and his inability to reach that "second simplicity" that marks most great pieces of art. Everything is so 'symbolic' here, so predictable even - we don't feel even grief when our 'experimental animals' (Val and the Lady) suddenly die. The badly used music at the end shows us the difference between Lumet's flat pathos and that of, let's say, of Visconti in "Rocco and his brothers", created the same year in Italy. But - and this saves the movie and makes its watching worthwhile despite the story line and presumptious dialogues - we have Magnani here, and we have Brando with very good moments, and we have the astonishing, underrated Joanne Woodward. Watching Magnani and Brando have their duo-scenes together, makes us BELIEVE in passion and torments, and at once, the paper becomes life.

As Highsmith's book does, and unlike Minghella's "Mr. Ripley", this early french version of the thriller is able to tell almost nothing - well, it's true, it tells even LESS than the book, p.g., about Ripley's sexuality - but to suggest, to hint, nonetheless, all the important things. Masterful, is, for instance, the brief sequence where Ripley walks along the fish market, playing with the motive of guilt and justice without any pretention, almost unremarkable. But in first regard this "enigmatism" arises from the performance of Alain Delon, who gives the whole range between complete bewilderness, the incapacity of expressing himself, and the charme of an animal aware of his cruel instincts. And this almost without "acting" in the strongest sense of the word, only due to his appearance.