The places and people that are farthest apart are now connected, no matter how remote, how industrial or how developed. For director Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros), Morocco, Mexico and Japan become examples of this concept in his new film, Babel. Iñárritu reveals to the audience the cultures and people of these countries to show the effect that they can have on one another and how sometimes the Western world can misinterpret certain events.
The opening scene of the film is in the Moroccan desert with the camera closely following a weathered man, named Hassan who is heading towards a stone hut. Once inside, he uncovers a large gun and offers it as a gift to another Moroccan family, which seems to begin the chain of events that will not only affect all of the family members, but other people who become accidentally involved. The focus is on the two brothers of the Moroccan family as they tend to their goatherd, proudly sporting the newly acquired weapon, with the directive to shoot jackals that might threaten any of the stock.
They begin to play with the gun and take turns firing as the shots echo throughout the rocky hills. At the same time, a tourist bus wanders through the twisting roads, standing out like a moving target for the two competing children. When they take turns firing, it is only the youngest one, Yussef, who proves his aim, but at the expense of the tourists, most specifically the vacationing American couple -- Richard, played by a worn and tough-looking Brad Pitt and the windswept and fatigued Susan, played by Cate Blanchett.
Meanwhile, the audience is taken away from the desert to a suburban house in San Diego where Amelia, a Mexican au pair, is watching two children. When she receives a phone call from their father demanding that she watch the children an extra day, Amelia protests due to her son's wedding. The au pair, seeing no other choice, decides to bring the children with her to the wedding when her nephew, Santiago, (Gael García Bernal), picks her up in his car. They easily cross through border patrol into Mexico, in jest at the long line waiting to clear for entry into the United States. At this point, the little Californian boy in the backseat announces that his mom told him Mexico is dangerous. "It is," replies the sly Santiago, "It's full of Mexicans."
The third setting that the audience is allowed access into is a city in Japan where high school age girls are playing a volleyball game. A girl immediately gets mad when the referee calls a ball out when she believes it isn't. It is only after she is kicked out of the game, and she is in the locker room after the game, that the audience realizes that the girl, named, Chieko, is deaf and mute.
Her anger does not seem exclusive to the lost match, as she is combative with her dad in the car as he drives her to meet her friends. The audience sees her frustration again and again in the first few scenes, as she can't read the mouths of people who speak too quickly for her and she is rejected by a group of boys because of her disability.
The brilliance of this movie is in Iñárritu direction and the writing by Guillermo Arriaga (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, 21 Grams). The immersion that both director and writer give to the audience in all three countries allows for an understanding of cultures that are often misunderstood. All of these immersions begin in the streets, whether it be the vibrancy and color of Mexico or the symbols and cityscape of Japan.
But perhaps what is most important is the reaction to these immersions. For example, when the tourist bus has to take a sudden side trip to a village in the mountains of Morocco, the Americans, British and French all become immediately scared, and belligerent. The shots of the town of Tazarine in the streets, the groups of children, the old television, the rocky huts and women going to the wells try to introduce this unfamiliar world in the context of the stressed and overheated tourists, so the audience begins to realize how ridiculous and ungracious the visitors are acting. One cannot help but conclude this to be a metaphor for the larger scale relation between the Muslim and Western worlds.
This is only one of the many powerful themes the film address. Because of the dramatic events that take place and the settings in which they occur, this film carries with it a weight, unlike that any recent release. All actors, known and unknown add gripping performances that will leave the audience with a different perspective of what they thought they knew.
