Four
stories about miscommunication intertwine, spanning continents, cultures, cityscapes and chicks without
panties.
BABEL is an exhausting, challenging movie, a masterpiece
of construction from writer/director Alejandro González Iñárritu;
a tale of alienation amongst the throng, of chest-grabbing desperation and fear
and isolation - emotionally defibrillating your brain. You come away from BABEL nauseous.
That's
what makes it so rewarding.
Constructed
in non-linear fashion, we are introduced to the characters in Babel via
sideways leaps in time. Their interplay does not become obvious right away as
director Iñárritu juggles causality and consequences, actions and
reactions.
Two
young Moroccan brothers, tending their sheep on a rocky hilltop, practice shooting
a rifle their father gave them as a present, aiming at faraway traffic on the
arid, dusty road; a pair of white, young American children are driven south of
the border by their Mexican nanny trying to make her son's wedding, then find
that the U.S. Border Patrol will not allow the illegal nanny back into the country
with them; an insecure deaf, teen Japanese girl, desperate to roll with the in-crowd,
tries to lose her virginity with awkward abandon; a couple cheerlessly holidaying
in Morocco face near-death from a senseless, accidental shooting…
The
movie's title is taken from the biblical Tower of Babel (Genesis 11 - yet another
instance of the Old Testament god's petulance and contradiction, forever rationalized
by "religious scholars" (now there's an oxymoron!) into further stupidity).
The Babel story tells of mankind being unified by one language and working together
to build a tower that would reach to heaven (basically, an old world ziggurat,
marking the center of their united township). God, in his abject childishness
and vanity, perceives their effort as a method to honor themselves (so
the scholars tell us) and that if mankind were this united, they could do anything
they set out to do. (Wasn't this - and isn't this - the ultimate goal of everyone
on earth, religious or otherwise? Autonomy, sovereignty, intelligence, self-sufficiency…)
So instead of lauding the "creations" whom he has supposedly bequeathed
"free will" - to discover for themselves the utility or futility of
"ladders to heaven" - this psychopathic god once again decimates any
semblance of order without a shred of logic or strategy: "Let us go down
and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's
speech." Why, hatemonger? The tower was abandoned, the people scattered; war - between people
who could not understand each other's cultures - continued. Gee, thanks Heavenly Dad! No
Vain, no Pain.
BABEL is like the world post-Babel - after the people who could not understand each other have been separated for millennia. But forget that biblical muddling of languages story - it is merely a rationalization for mankind's provincialism (again blaming an outside force for the small-mindedness of mankind, imbuing that outside force with mankind's small-mindedess). Provincialism is an evolutionary strategy that aids a species' survive in a hostile
environment. Our built-in provincialism is a vestige of that survival instinct:
don't trust strangers, venture cautiously into foreign areas, lack of communication
means lower chance of survival, always wear panties, and so on…
BABEL's soundtrack (by Gustavo Santaolalla) is sparse, foreboding, as alien as the landscapes
that are thrown at us in stark contrasts - the bleak, barren Moroccan desert,
the clamorous clutter of Mexico, the splashy Technicolor of Japan.
Except
for three main characters, Iñárritu casts unknowns, with many of
the Moroccans non-actors (Boubker Ait El Caid and Said Tarchani as the two boys,
Mustapha Rachidi as their father, Driss Roukhe as Captain Alarid), yet each of
them an acting marvel. Of course, Brad Pitt is onboard (looking suitably haggard)
lending marquee strength, but rather than his presence dragging the production
into Cheese Hollywood, the movie actually takes him the other way into
nuance, as he battles to understand the culture and language of the low-caste
Moroccan village he is inadvertently trapped in with his wife (Cate Blanchett),
shot accidentally by one of the boys.
Even
though the Moroccan boys are responsible for shooting a stranger and causing insurmountable
misery, there is no ill feeling towards them, as the movie shows us how their
unthinking act also impacted them even more adversely than their unintended victim.
We feel the same way towards the nanny who irresponsibly takes her two young charges
out of the country and is then made to suffer overwhelming fear and near-death
in the desert for her stupidity. In all four stories, no one is innocent, yet
being guilty does not make us hate them.
Three
of the stories are very solidly intertwined (the shot woman, the Morrocan boys,
the children in Mexico). The fourth story takes a good time to slot into any relevance,
that of Chieko, the Japanese girl (Rinko Kikuchi), although her predicament is
a story unto itself.
With
the main theme being isolation, writers Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga
convey that language is not the only obstacle that people might have to overcome
in communication - Chieko's deafness (and by extension, any disability to the
human condition) is just as isolating.
Going
panty-less everywhere in her quest to lose her virginity, Chieko not only does
those normal things that teenagers do (in the grip of wild hormones and wilder
drugs) but overcompensates in her quest for acceptance as a deaf person.
In
a nightclub scene (that alternates between sense-glutting and suddenly ripping
to vacuum when we see the clamor from Chieko's soundless point of view) Iñárritu
captures that indefinable euphoria of teen puppy love - and how it is dashed to
pieces, as Cheiko realizes the teen boy whom she felt a connection with would
just as haphazardly "connect" with her best friend. She is driven to
boldly throw herself sexually at a police officer, who ethically refuses her awkward
advances.
Chieko's
predicament could be taken in two ways. At first glance, her tale of a dead mother,
her deafness and isolation is extremely sad. The alternate view is due to the
overly-litigious nature of abjectly unjust California law courts: If an underage
girl like Chieko was to seduce a man and if he were to TAKE the opportunity -
he would be at fault. If, like the policeman, he REFUSED her advance and she became
angered at the rejection, she need only accuse him of seducing her - and he would
be at fault again. The man can't win. Or, more correctly, it is up to the graces
of the girl whether the man walks away from the situation unscathed or destroyed.
The
irony is that these utterly perverse laws were passed by men in order to please
women so as to get into their pants in the first place.
The
Border Patrol scene (involving Monica del Carmen as the nanny, Gael García
Bernal as her impetuous driver and Clifton Collins Jr. in a chilling performance
as a Border Patrol Guard) strikes close to home for Californians, and shows us
how immigration procedures, while useful to a country's security (read
as government's greed), only create horror and pain for individuals.
Bernal's
performance in this film outshines Pitt, as Pitt's onscreen time is packed solid
with "Oscar Clips," while Bernal (like his smoldering role in Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN) makes "acting" look like business as usual.
In
a way, I feel sorry for Pitt because he needs to pull off so much extra acting-choppery
to convince time and again that he is not just a pretty face. Not even a pretty
face, as it stands in this production, prompting many reviewers to comment he
"plays against type" in BABEL (whatever "type" they've
burned into their minds - as far as I'm concerned, Pitt has always displayed a
great acting depth; he just happens to be burdened with that glam-slamming mug
and taut obliques).
Why
can't more people make films this good? (That question answers itself when Adam
Sandler and Will Ferrell enter the equation as economic gears.)
You come
away from BABEL with your guts broiling, vowing to try to understand the
plights of others - or at least vowing to get your immigration papers in order
before attending that off-the-hook party in Tijuana.
