"If you want to be understood... listen"
"In the beginning, all the Lord's people from all parts of the world spoke one language. Nothing they proposed was impossible for them. But fearing what the spirit of man could accomplish the Lord said "let us go down and confuse their language so that they may not understand one another's speech."
I recently had an opportunity to once again view the 2006 film Babel...
A sad and harrowing tale which expertly weaves three seemingly disparate family stories together into a global tapestry and as a result sheds some light on the interconnectedness of the human condition.
The three stories consist of an American couple traveling in Morocco, a nanny returning to her native Mexico for her son’s wedding, and a deaf Japanese teenager desperately searching for a human connection of her own in Tokyo.
Each of these stories focuses in some manner on a relationship between a parent and a child. The relevance and apparent lesson is that we first learn to communicate through our connection to our parents. Babel is ultimately a portrayal of just how difficult it is to honestly communicate with one another in an increasingly shrinking world.
A goat-herding Moroccan father acquires a high-powered rifle for his sons in order to keep predators at bay. His two young sons begin the film by setting off a chain of events that will resonate for the viewer for the remainder of the film. A bullet from this gun pierces the metal shell of a tourist bus, hitting an innocent victim.
The Tokyo story is particularly heartbreaking and could even exist on its own if extended to a full-length feature film. The deaf teenage girl yearns for a connection with anyone as her internal anger resonates from serial rejection manifesting itself in several instances of social misbehavior. This slice of the story is psychologically accurate and quite compelling.
If anything negative can be said for this film it is that there is no beginning and no end, rather it is more a snapshot in time, and then life goes on. Instead of witnessing one hero on his journey, the emotional power of the story is diminished by having us peer into the lives of several people we don’t get to know all that well. But this results in another of the film’s central themes -- not only does every action have a consequence, but every inaction does as well.
Both writer Guillermo Arriago and director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (also collaborators on Amores Perros and 21 Grams) are at the top of their game here. This production is of the highest standard, with excellent music, cinematography, and performances, making this an all-around, compelling work of art.
It is a film that will stay with you long after the credits finish rolling.
