In Chapter 11 of Genesis, the story of the Tower of Babel, the Babylonians try to build a tower to reach the heavens, and God punishes them for their heedless ambition: "Come," He says, "let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." The whole interaction takes a mere nine verses. By contrast, the film "Babel," entering wide release on Friday, takes well over two hours to contemplate how language divides us and how desperate we are to reunite after that iconic tower's fall. It's worth the time investment.
Judging from the trailer, "Babel" appears to primarily follow Susan (Cate Blanchett), an American mother of two, who, while touring the badlands of Morocco with her beleaguered husband Richard (Brad Pitt), falls victim to an ill-fated game of target practice. Along the way, we glimpse other, apparently unconnected perspectives: the life of the couple's nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza), the two Moroccan boys who shoot Susan (Boubker Ait El Caid and Said Tarchani) and Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), a deaf Japanese schoolgirl.
But just as one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, one shouldn't judge a movie by its trailer. The two Hollywood superstars are, surprisingly, not the focus of the film, but just one fourth of its transnational narrative. All four stories, which range geographically from the Mexican-American border to Morocco to Tokyo, interconnect. Through their respective dissonance, a sense of universality arises.
The stories unravel in the unconventional, disorienting style that also characterized the two previous collaborations between director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams." These three movies form a trilogy of sorts, linked not by plot or characters, but rather by mood and technique. In "Babel," as in "Amores," the vignettes are presented out of chronological order. This jarring presentation subverts our intuition to seek out cause-effect relationships and fill in the narrative gaps between scenes. While in "21 Grams" one could easily get lost in abrupt, sometimes purposeless transitions, in "Babel," Inarritu spends enough time on each storyline that characters become fleshed out. Overall, "Babel" is the most engaging and coherent of the trilogy.
"Babel" also shares the tragic overtones of "21 Grams" and, to a lesser extent, "Amores Perros." While Susan is stuck getting stitches sans anesthesia in a remote Moroccan village, quarreling brothers Yussef and Ahmed try to hide their crime as rumors of a terrorist attack begin to circulate. As the incident was, more or less, an accident, Inarritu and Arriaga imply something about the paranoia of our time and the assumptions we make about strange, foreign lands.
Back in America, Amelia is taking Richard and Susan's children into Mexico for her own son's wedding; her nephew, the seemingly amiable but ultimately irrational hothead Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal), drives. It gives nothing away to say they have problems crossing back into America after the ceremony. It is here that Inarritu and Arriaga posit something akin to the Biblical story's message — that a language barrier is what splits two neighbors like America and Mexico.
In Chieko's segment, such notions of language and communication become more cogent. We learn late about Chieko's indirect involvement in the Moroccan shooting, but, oddly enough, that becomes a strangely minor point in an otherwise gripping sequence. Chieko is in the least desperate circumstances of all the characters, but her tale is also ironically the most compelling in both her characterization and the segment's messages. Chieko is isolated from much of her ultra-urban society because of her inability to communicate with it; belonging to a school for the hearing impaired, she maintains close friendships but cannot escape her condition outside of its sphere. We sometimes become directly aware of this condition, as Inarritu repeatedly drops the sound in the midst of a frantic rave. This allows for deep immersion into Chieko's psychology — an immersion unfortunately missing from the three other segments.
The emotion Kikuchi was able to convey in the role merely through sign and body language is remarkable, and her desperation is more palpable than that of the other characters who are in much more dangerous situations. Repelled by isolation, Chieko is driven to feel close to someone, and reverts to the most primal mode of communication: sex. She is not looking for a moment's pleasure, however, but a kind of connection that transcends language and reaches deep into the soul.
Perhaps the purpose of "Babel" is to insist that, despite how disparate our world is, we are united by our humanity. Yet, the instances of such unity in "Babel" are all laced with misery. Do we really transcend national boundaries only when our necks are on the line? "Babel" almost implies such an idea. Mostly, though, Inarritu and Arriaga are content to observe people as products of their environment rather than free-willed agents within it. The result is a thoroughly memorable piece that gives, at its best moments, a remarkable view of the world from a truly modern, international perspective.
Pros: Visceral portrayals; refreshingly innovative storytelling; Japanese segment a triumph; sobering and relevant; stays with you after you leave the theater
Cons: Nonlinear narrative might draw some away; plot is somewhat contrived; vignettes are uneven in quality; political subtext often muddled
Paws: 4/5
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