BABEL: Big Oscar Loser is a Real Winner

Babel, according to the story in the Bible, is the place where Noah’s descendants tried to build a tower up to heaven. God did not look kindly on this display of human arrogance and punished the builders by causing each of them speak in a different language. This created confusion and brought an end to the building project. It also scattered and disconnected the people across the planet.

It’s the confusion and disconnect caused by language that lies at the heart of BABEL. Even when the characters are speaking the same language they still fail to communicate because they don’t listen to one another.

Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has crafted a complex narrative out of four separate story threads, each set in a different part of the world. The film jumps with unsettling abruptness between the Moroccan desert, the suburbs of San Diego, Baja California in Mexico, and the urban jungle of central Tokyo, and each location is apparently unconnected to all the others.

Not only are they all separated by space, but also by time. The perception that all the stories are running in parallel to one another comes under increasing challenge as the story lines unfold. No sooner are we able to begin making tentative connections between them than we are forced to reassess what we think we know because it is not at all clear when these events are occurring in relation to each other.

It’s a device that Inarritu used to brilliant effect in his previous film “21 Grams.” And BABEL similarly demands your full attention.

Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett provide the anchor for these seemingly disparate storylines. They play Richard and Susan Jones, travelling with a busload of British and French tourists through the barren valleys and mountains of Morocco.

It soon becomes clear that they are a couple in crisis although the cause of their problems is unclear. They allude to it without really talking about it. She is unable to articulate her anger, and he can’t explain why he did whatever it was that he did which has made her so upset.

While we are trying to understand the dynamics of their relationship we are also attempting to establish their connection to a couple of young Moroccan boys tending their family’s herd of goats on an inhospitable desert mountainside, and playing with their father’s newly acquired high powered rifle.

And how do these two story strands connect with Amelia (a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominated Adriana Barraza), a middle aged Mexican woman and live-in nanny for a young American brother and sister? She’s trying unsuccessfully to find someone to take them for her so her nephew Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal) can drive her back into Mexico to attend her son’s wedding?

Most confusingly of all – what could possibly be the connection between these three strands and Cheiko, (Rinko Kikucki, also nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar) a teenage deaf mute volleyball player, living with her father in a high rise apartment building in Tokyo, and mourning the mysterious death of her mother?

To reveal anymore of the plot would be to spoil what is a compelling and complex web of relationships.

Pitt and Blanchett are the names above the title, but their performances are more than equalled by their lesser known co-stars. Barraza and Kikucki are outstanding in their portrayal of women driven to desperation by their circumstances. It was only the fierceness of the competition in their category

which denied one of them the gold statuette on Oscar night.

BABEL was up for seven Academy Awards at the 2007 ceremony but took home only one, for Best Original Score. Director Inarritu was unfortunate in being nominated for Best Director in the same year that Martin Scorcese was also up for the award for directing his best piece of work in years.

Inarritu’s intricate and thought provoking tapestry of situations and people forces us to recognise the narrow, fragile rail upon which each of our lives runs, and how it can so easily be derailed by the random and unthinking action of another.  

It also challenges our expectation that if our well ordered life is suddenly thrown into chaos, we will be able to rely on those around us to help, whether that’s our spouse, our parents, our friends, our government, or simply our fellow human beings. Are we right to expect more from those with whom we share a language and a culture, and less from those we regard as foreign?

The answers BABEL offers are unexpected and sometimes disturbing, but always thought provoking. This is a film whose images and characters will stay with you long after the final credits have rolled.