"Babel:" It's a Harsh World, Honey

by Allison Dunatchik

Title: Babel.
Directed by: Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, Gael Garcia Bernal, Elle Fanning, Adrianna Barraza, Rinko Kikuchi, Koji Yakusho, Said Tarchani, Boubker Ait El Caid.
Genre: Drama.
MPAA Rating: R for violence, some nudity, sexual content, language, and some drug use.

Why do we watch movies? As much as we may grumble about having to shell out ten bucks for a movie ticket, the shallowness of Hollywood, or the bloated salaries of big-name actors and actresses, there is something undeniably alluring about movies. Movies allow us to escape our own mundane lives for few hours – just long enough experience the thrill of leading an exciting life. It’s understandable, then that we love to watch movies about love too perfect to exist, heroes we could never measure up to, and lives too charmed or too dramatic to ever exist in real life. They allow us to suspend reality, and satisfy out escapist cravings. But then there are movies that take reality and hurl it back in your face. Unlike other movies, their aim is to draw attention to those very aspects of life we tend to push to the back of our minds. The recently-released film, Babel (which has a striking resemblance to Paul Higgin’s 2004 film, Crash) does just that as it brings to the screen the sad realities of international discord and cultural division.

Babel follows four loosely intertwined stories that take place in three very different environments at roughly the same time. The first story follows a Moroccan family who had recently purchased a rifle to protect their goats from wild jackals. While tending to their goats one day, the family’s two sons decide to practice their marksmanship by shooting at rocks and cars passing on the road below. One of the boys hits a tour bus, setting off a chain of events that you know can only end in tragedy. As it turns out, the bullet hit an American tourist on the bus and the incident is automatically presumed by Americans to be a terrorist attack. As was likely its intention, this story shows us the tragedy that can arise from one little boy’s mistake when that mistake is complicated by the US’s war on terrorism and does much to reflect the harsh realities of life in a country suspected of harboring terrorists.

The second story follows the story of the gunshot victim (played by Cate Blanchett) on the bus and her husband (played by a rather convincing Brat Pitt) an American couple who had traveled to Morocco in an attempt to save their marriage. With no hospital nearby and the woman losing a considerable amount of blood, the bus drives to the nearest village so the couple can seek medical assistance and contact the American Embassy for help. The couple is forced to wait as diplomatic problems between the US and Morocco forestall the process of sending a medical rescue team, casting both governments as cold-hearted and inept bureaucracies. On top of that, the purely selfish tendencies of human nature are painfully depicted as the bus and the rest of its passengers, fearing a terrorist attack and unable to withstand the heat, desert the couple in the village.

The third story follows the couple’s two children and the nanny who cares for them while their parents are out of town. The nanny (played magnificently by Adrianna Barraza) is to attend her son’s wedding in Mexico but due to the events unfolding in Morocco must take the children with her. Inevitably, as they try to cross back over the border from Mexico to the children’s home in California, they are stopped by the border patrol. The driver, the nanny’s nephew (played by Gael Garcia Bernal) decides to make a break for it, and when the police give chase, he panics and leaves the nanny and two children in the middle of the desert. After a few heartbreaking scenes of the nanny carrying the children aimlessly though the desert under the scorching sun, they are discovered by the police and we learn that the nanny has been working in the US illegally and now faces deportation. The point of this story is painfully spelled out for us as the nanny tearfully pleads with the police chief to let her stay, that she loves the children and has cared for them all of their lives. We cannot help but sympathize with her and balk at the injustice and discrimination present in America’s immigration policies.

The final story follows an adolescent deaf-mute girl in Tokyo whose father was the original owner of the rifle used in the shooting in Morocco. We discover her deep despair as we learn the realities of what it means to deaf in modern society and rendered unable to communicate with most of your peers. By witnessing her grief and difficulties fitting into society, we are shamed for ever having taken our own ability to hear – and anything else for that matter – for granted.

All of these bleak reflections of reality are valid and important to recognize. However, Babel’s ambitious attempt to incorporate all of them in a single film leaves the audience’s emotions rather raw and ravaged. That being said, the film does have two saving graces. The first is in the breath-taking score, composed by Argentine musician Gustavo Santaolalla that adds a beautiful and almost poetic element to the tragedy of the events that take place in the film. The second is the absolutely stunning scenery that eloquently juxtaposes the barren terrain of Morocco, Mexico and southern California with the overwhelmingly populated and cosmopolitan Tokyo.

The point of the film seems to get at the idea that although geography and international conflict may divide us, we are all humans and our lives, no matter what country we reside in, are all similarly marked by tragedy. If you are of the mindset that movies should be an escape from the realities of life, this movie, which is built on the most heartbreaking of realities, is not for you. However, if you consider movies to be the perfect opportunity to reflect on the harsh realities of life (and you are prepared for two or three movies’ worth of content crammed into one two-hour film) Babel is a well-made and beautifully shot portrayal of the tragedy of human existence.

(Babel promotional photo of Brad Pitt and Kate Blanchett, courtesy of Paramount Pictures.)

(To see a trailer for Babel, check below.)




Babel
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Drama
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