Babel

Babel: to confuse and confound.

I found this movie deeply disturbing.
It reminded me about that quality of invincible American self-confidence and youthful bravado (which had always informed our cinema point of view), and which is now gone.

Just like the American icon: Indiana Jones, who is confronted by an ‘infidel-other ‘. A middle-eastern man draped in black cloth and turban, madly swashbuckling with a sword, and then ‘Indi' just pulls out his revolver and pops him off. Bang! Problem solved! And everyone laughs, right?

Babel is a confusing and confounding tapestry of events that ultimately hinges on one arbitrary exchange of a rifle that causes a ripple of tragic events. With everything else involved, the movie works as an anti-gun protest. And carries with it a tragic sense of modern American abandonment, betrayal and helplessness, which is brilliantly played out by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchete.

Each and every character in the story somehow becomes a victim of arbitrary circumstance relating to this wretched gun; and (as viewer) you are not offered the luxury of blame.
It is so frustratingly sad, it brought tears to my eyes.

The movie is made in a CNN docu-drama style that rips the viewer out from a detached position of observer, straight into the grueling experience of it all.
It is most uncomfortable.

Art mirroring our political/cultural life.
This movie portrays both its title as well as our own modern dilemma by the use of multi languages, sub-titles, and a general amount of audio/visual ‘noise'.

I also think a subliminal reference is made to 9/11 in the title ‘Babel': a tall tower built in an attempt to reach ‘Heaven' by people whose decadent presumptions so displeased God that 'He' brought it down by confusing the languages of its builders. So ultimately a lack of communication was the tower's ruin, and its collapse symbolized the demise of a nation.
An ancient fairy-tale as a poignant reminder of our modern equivalent: The WTC, whose demise also highlights a confusing and confounding (international) babel of tongues.

A political/moral stance is subtly revealed in the portrayal of Moroccan peasants and the two children who unwittingly trigger a chain of events, and are instantly labeled and pursued as ‘Terrorists'.

Their plight is contrasted with (dysfunctional) first world family examples, where we see how an inability to communicate at the most fundamental level tears people's lives apart.

When a busload full of first-world-tourists encounters tragedy, a veneer of first world Humanism is quickly replaced by ignoble, self-serving, mean spiritedness. Which is contrasted by the simple Humanism of peasant villagers. Thus the question of who should actually be feared in the situation is raised, as is the aggressive pursuit of so-called ‘Terrorists' questioned.

Parenting is likewise contrasted, and without any romantic idealizations we see a simple Muslim peasant father contrasted with a first-world liberal Japanese businessman (who by implication turns out to be a highly abusive father).
And so the dysfunctional family relationships together with their corrupted western culture full of greed, carnal desire and decadence remain in stark contrast with the mountainous terrain and ascetic lives of the Muslim ‘infidels'.

A communication of: all is not well in our culture, is portrayed everywhere, but in spite of this the movie manages to remain non-judgmental, and is not anti-American in any way at all. I think this point is very well illustrated in the tender portrayal of two American children and their plight of being abandoned in the desert in spite of the best of intentions.

I shall never forget those anguished facial expressions made by the little boy when he is abandoned in the desert (metaphorically speaking by his own fucked-up culture). This is in my view, made one of the most gut-wrenching representations of a new American spirit I have ever seen, and made tears roll down my cheeks!

Highly recommended, but NOT for the faint-hearted!

Therefore… if you are the type who prefers to keep dancing on deck to the tunes of violins, whilst drinking champagne under a still, starry, nights sky… then this one is not for you.