Review of Babel (2006) by Larry L — 08 Nov 2012

According to the Bible there was once a time when all people spoke the same language and were working together towards a utopia. They no longer needed God, so he sent down angels to confuse them. Our languages became separate and the tower of Babel fell.

Today we are left with many different languages and cultures. We have our own ideas of what can create a utopia and we pursue that and deny the way others live. Inarritu forces the audience to question themselves about how truly open they are to other cultures before he makes the rest of his point.

We see things such as a family eating from one bowl with their fingers (the father licks his fingers then puts them back in the bowl). I couldn't handle that. I have problems with people drinking from the same cup as me.

Then we have the Mexican tradition of twisting off a chicken's head and having the kids chase it at a wedding. The only one that didn't have something culturally shocking was Chieko's story, which was shocking enough to see her trying to lose her virginity.

And I'm sure there was something culturally shocking in the American segment, but we could probably go with stuff that happens later like how the media reports that terrorists attacked a bus before they figure out what actually took place.

It's in Morocco, but since an American was shot on a tour bus it must be terrorists, right? That's a really shocking element in this as well, the whole film centers around a gun shot made by an innocent kid.

Well, he's not completely innocent, he watches his sister as she undresses and he's shooting at a bus on purpose, but he never meant to hurt anyone. He didn't even believe the bullet would reach the bus.

Unfortunately it ends up hitting Susan, who's on vacation with her husband for what seems to be them trying to fix their marriage. In a way the gunshot was a miracle since it brought them back together when everything else seemed to not be working.

There is a bit of a surprise here, and that's the fact that Amelia's story happens after everything else takes place. I'm not sure if it was necessary to have something like that in this film, but it was definitely a surprise.

I guess I was so involved in the film that I didn't think about the phone call happening while Richard was in the hospital. The only story I think might be too much of a stretch to be connected to this film is Chieko's.

It seems to me the film's largely about how we all seem culturally different, but when a crisis occurs we all react the same way. There's at least one universal language. But the big emotional crisis that happened in Chieko's life happened 9 months before the film opens, and that's her mom killing herself.

It turns out she's related to this story through her father because he's the one who gave his gun to the hunter who then sold it to the boys' father who gives it to them to kill jackals to save their sheep.

From a distance it seems like a terrible attack occurred, but it was all innocent. Another big thing Babel asks is for people to listen to one another. The people on the bus don't want to sit in the heat for Susan, so they keep pestering Richard about leaving.

Chieko has obvious communication problems and wants her father to listen to her, but he's been absent ever since her mom died (I think this could have been covered better because it seems like she might just be bratty and holding herself off from him because she's a teenager).

Richard needed to listen to Amelia about her son's wedding, and she also needed to listen to him about the seriousness of his situation. The police in Morocco need to listen to their citizens instead of automatically treating them like they are criminals.

And Santiago needed to listen to the border patrol just like they needed to listen to him. The culture clash tears these people apart. It makes the audience become aware of their own biases they might not realize they have.

It begs for everyone to be more open, to work together and listen to each other. Even with people in our own language we don't listen. Perhaps God came down and confused us, but we can work together and make things better again.

I liked how some stories had happy endings and others didn't. It wasn't an across the board trying to make the audience feel bad kind of ending. We have Susan surviving and coming back home to her kids with Richard.

They make up while he puts the pot under her so she can pee, which was a great way of showing their rediscovered connection. Amelia's going to be deported, but she survived and so did the kids. Hopefully Santiago's caught and punished big time for breaking through the border and putting everyone's lives in danger.

Chieko's naked on the balcony hugging her father, which shows how they are going to start listening to one another and connect again on a deeper level. And out of the brothers, the older one gets shot and the younger one confesses while the father's left mourning over his dead son.

With the ending on the balcony and the music I can't help but feel how this film inspires people even though it's so dramatically difficult. Sure there are moments that seem to happen just because the writer needed them to in order to move things to the next place.

But it's not like Breaking Bad where it almost completely breaks character just to go somewhere cool. With its purpose and heart I found myself not too bothered by some of the messiness. It's not like Crash where they say people are just racist at heart.

Instead this seems to find where we are all the same. Perhaps one day we will come together and build another tower of Babel.