Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s ‘Babel’ continues in the vein of his earlier works, ‘Amores Perros’ and ‘21 Grams’, charting the fatalistic collision of several lives. This time though, he extends his canvas to encompass three continents and a multi-lingual ensemble cast ranging from Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett to Japanese star Koji Yakusho, Mexican hunk Gael Garcia Bernal and a host of unknown, but exceptionally talented actors. The narrative style is typically Inarritu, with disjointed fragments of each story strewn across a running time of over 140 minutes in a seemingly random fashion.
Gradually, slices of the jigsaw puzzle start falling into place as the clash of civilizations, cultures and languages fuels a sense of anarchy in the contrast it creates between the despair of a capitalist first world and the impoverished desolation of places and people almost given the pass by modern life and technology.
Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga begin their story against the arid landscape of Morocco, where the innocuous purchase of a hunting rifle by a shepherd triggers the first accident. His sons, trying out some target practice, take a shot at a tourist bus to gauge the rifle’s reach. Unfortunately, the bullet meets its mark in the form of an American woman, Susan (Blanchett) taking a holiday with her husband Richard (Pitt) in an attempt to patch up their fragile marriage following the death of their infant son.
The director manipulates screen time to align this episode with another incident that takes place in Mexico after the shooting to heighten the cinematic tension. Susan and Richard’s children are in San Diego with their Mexican nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza), who wants the day off to attend her son’s wedding. Since the couple is in distress in Morocco, and she cannot find anyone else to look after the children, she decides to take them along to her village across the border, accompanied by her lively, but hot-headed nephew Santiago (Bernal).
While Richard, who’s several hours away from the nearest hospital takes his wife to a small village in the middle of nowhere where a kindly soul and his mother offer them shelter and tend to her wounds, his children get exposed to a whole new way of life in Mexico, just a few miles south of their home, but dramatically different from the world they live in.
Next, the scene shifts to Tokyo, where a deaf-mute teenager Chieko (brilliantly enacted by Rinko Kikuchi) is grappling with her handicap and her mother’s recent suicide, as her worried father (Yakusho) looks on. She’s also becoming conscious of her own sexuality and desperately (but unsuccessfully) trying to attract every man in sight, which adds to her humiliation.
The Japanese story is farthest removed from the main plot that unfolds in Morocco, but mirrors the communication barriers and sense of isolation and helplessness that permeates the fabric of the entire film. It is also the most fascinating of the four stories in terms of its visual treatment. Chieko’s world is brought alive in a startling contrast between the clang of techno music, dizzying psychedelic lights and the emptiness of her inner self, painted in silence.
The film’s tension is heightened both by its dramatic content and its layered narrative. As Richard struggles to save his wife, Amelia lands herself in serious trouble while trying to smuggle the kids back into the US, the Moroccan boys are hounded by a police force desperate to banish suspicion of terrorist links to the freak accident and Chieko’s behaviour becomes more and more bizarre.
What rankles about Inarritu’s resolution though (and unlike his earlier two films) is that while there is some sense of deliverance for the rich, the have nots must sink further in the depths of turmoil and pay a disproportionately heavy price for their sins. Also, the inevitability of fate hangs so heavy over the proceedings, it almost seems like nothing in this world is within human control.
But it does suggest, quite effectively, that in an increasingly globalised and polarised world, conflict and chaos is inevitable.
Deepa Gumaste
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