Review of Babel (2006) by ?Ukasz O — 19 Sep 2010

Ah, Babel, my second favourite movie of all time.

Babel follows the lives of two mountain dwelling Moroccan goat herder boys, a Mexican nanny working in America looking after two children, a traveling American couple who are the parents of the two children the nanny looks after and a deaf mute Japanese girl who is ignored all the time and is in constant search of intimacy.

These stories are all tied together when the American woman is shot and wounded on a tour bus in Morocco. The Moroccan boys do the shooting by accident whilst foolishly playing with a gun. The world kinda falls apart for everyone when this happens.

This is a movie about peoples' intolerance of people who are different to them. Now a lot of films have dealt with this concept before, so the subject matter is not new, but this time it feels a lot different. Most films go in directly and attack racism and religious extremism and explore the violence that occurs, they just go ahead and shout "Look! Look at these people! How can they treat another human being like that? Just because of the colour of his skin!" Whereas Babel steers away from that, it explores the confusion and frustration encountered when cultures mix, hence the name Babel.

They all have their encounters with people who are different, but it never feels self-righteous because it deals with confusion instead of hatred. The nanny runs into problems with border security because she is a Mexican woman in a car with an intoxicated Mexican driving and two white kids in the back who definitely aren't hers, the border guards act within their rights to apprehend them as opposed to being all "Hurr, we're boarder security and we're going to arrest who and molest you and you can't do anything because we're white and your Mexican and we're the law men!" *coughCrashcough* They do so due to the confusion caused by the racial barrier.

The American couple run into trouble in Morocco when they are stranded in a country where not much English is spoken. The husband is angry and frustrated when an ambulance doesn't show up immediately like it would in America and resorts to abuse and threats. And no one really cares too much, not because he's an American infidel pig-dog, but just because he appears to be a crazy guy shouting a bunch of babble (that word originates from the word Babel), and they can't really sympathise with him, the same thing could happen anywhere in the world.

The boys get their share of confusion when two objects they know but aren't acquainted with enter their lives, a gun and a bus. They shoot think it'll be fun to shoot the bus, they don't consider who might get hit. And the government instead of being a brutal third world government (actually they are quite brutal) who simply murder everyone to solve the problem, they try to solve it ASAP because they don't want to be panned as a terrorist country as is likely to happen in this day and age.

And finally the Japanese girl. She is quite a poignant figure despite the fact that she is not as connected to the story as the others are. Instead of being met with cruelty because of her disability she is met only with indifference. The people around her aren't demonised because it's very difficult to connect with someone who you can't communicate with unless you know sign language, so we can kinda understand why she is ignored. She get's noticed in the only way she can which is to attempt to seduce men sexually. She is often pushed away for doing so because people fail to realise that she is not necessarily looking for someone to fuck, she is merely looking for someone to connect with.

No one is the good guy, no one is the bad guy, they're all just people separated from their surroundings by an inability to communicate. Hence the name Babel, which is taken from a biblical story in which God scattered people around the world and changed their languages rendering them unable to communicate and therefore unable to work together and complete the tower of Babel. It doesn't go the path of other films such as Crash and American History X by showing violence and hatred, only confusion and frustration.

This is one of the cleverest, most emotionally wrenching and entertaining films I have ever seen. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu presents us with his best work so far, even though it's in the same style as 21 Grams and Amores Perros it more mature and sophisticated than both of them. It's backed up by an excellent script by Guillermo Arriaga, great performances by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchet, Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi brilliant cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto and haunting music scores by Gustavo Santaolalla (I had to credit their names here).

How The Departed won Best Picture over this I will never know, probably just because the Academy realised that Martin Scorsese is one of the best directors alive but didn't have an Oscar yet nor had any of his films won.

I give this 5 out of 5 stars, it is a must see for all film lovers.