Review 585: Babel

  

Babel is a harrowing, masterfully crafted psychological drama film and

A tragic accident in Morocco sets off a chain of events that will link four groups of people who, divded by cultural differences and vast distances, will discover a shared destiny that ultimately connects them.

The plot is an intricate web of     Babel can analyzed as a network narrative in which the characters, scattered across the globe, represent different nodes of a network that is connected by various strands.  It should be noted that Babel has multiple protagonists, but no heroes and villains, only only victims of fate and circumstance and asks us to empathize with all of these people. As a result, the narrative becomes more complex in relation to time and causality.

One of the central connections between all of the characters is the rifle. Over the course of the film, we as an audience find out that Yasujiro Wataya (Koji Yakusho) visited Morocco for a hunting trip and gifts his guide, Hassan Ibrahim, with a rifle. Hassan then proceeds to sell the rife to goatherder, Abdullah who then passes it on to his sons. Cate Blanchett's Susan is wounded in an accident caused by that rifle which, in turn, has tragic consequences for their nanny Amelia's life.

Miscommunication: The title of the film is a reference to the biblical story The Tower of Babel where God punishes his people by taking away their shared language and thus, their ability to communicate with each other, resulting in chaos and hostility among them. Most of the characters in the movie are connected by not only having to deal with language barriers, but also their inability to poperly communicate their feelings and wishes, which then leads to complicated turns, trouble and pain.                                          The miscommunication between Richard Jones (Brad Pitt) and his wife Susan (Cate Blanchett) leads them to being in Morocco. The miscommunication between Richard and his Mexican nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza) leads to her taking Richard and Susan's children to Mexico. The miscommunication between Amelia's nephew Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal) and the police at the Mexican border leads to Amelia ultimately being deported.

Globalization: What Babel does so masterfully and so profoundly is show how the actions of one person on one continent can affect the lives of people on different continents and vice versa. It shows how travel, news, telecommunication and other sympton of the globalization maximise the magnitude of actions across the globe and how people, who would usually have no contact with each other are connected not only by actions but also by items. Babel also portrays through its narration the simultaneous developments of incidents across borders, countries and space in general. Characters are also linked through time, something that can be percived only now, thanks to the rapid communication that's developing in a globalized world.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's direction is bold and unobtrusive; filming the unfolding events with hand-held cameras that help to immerse us in the experience and provide a documentry like feel to the peice. The cinematography is beautiful and captures the  the locations are stunning, the score by Gustavo Santaolalla is

Brad Pitt and Cate Blachett are mesmirising in this film. Their characters, Richard and Susan Jones are among the many victims of circumstance

Adriana Barraza is ernest and sympathetic playing Amelia Hernández, the Jones' family's nanny who through a series of unfortunate circumstances 

5/5.

The Anonymous Critic.