Paradoxical portrait of mankind -- Babel
CLEVERLY CRAFTED COMPLEX ENSEMBLE: Babel
Babel
Genre: Drama
Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate
Blanchett, Gael Garcia
Bernal, Koji Yakusho,
Adriana Barazza, Rinko
Kikuchi
Director: Alejandro
Gonzalez Inarritu
Storyline: How different
people in different places
across the world bond and
survive.
Bottomline: If you want
to understand, watch
closely. Again.
If you watched Babel and came out feeling indifferent to the film, chances are that you probably just lost the plot. The tag-line actually goes: If you want to understand, listen.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who made `Amores Perros' and `21 Grams,' uses his trademark non-linear, episodic narrative connected by one incident, this time round, to explore the politics of communication and the factors that keep the human race divided in an increasingly volatile world.
Yes, it helps to understand the Biblical context before you head to the hall. In fact, it is that context that ties everything up in a film that's subject to varied interpretation.
At the surface, Babel merely seems to be the story of an American couple holidaying in Morocco, whose world is shattered, moments after a goatherd kid pulls the trigger to prove to his brother that the rifle (originally belonging to a hunter in Japan) given to them, could hit distant targets. In a remote village called Tazarine where surgeries and anesthesia are unheard of, the couple awaits medical aid.
With the parents stuck in Morocco, the Mexican nanny taking care of the American kids is left with no choice but to take them along to her son's wedding across the border.
In Tokyo
And far away in Tokyo, the Japanese hunter has a deaf-mute daughter who has a difficult time making the boys understand her quest for love. But, as you catch and connect instances of weapons, lust/love sometimes manifested through incest (the censoring of a critical portion towards the end does take away a significant layer from the film) and the most primal needs of man (to hunt, to love, to endure and survive) scattered across the four stories, and, traces of all the needs in each of the stories, you see the larger picture emerging.
The characters in the film suffer because they cannot understand each other. . In each of the four stories they are primal at some level, they all get violent at some point, they are all animals looking to mate or looking out for their mates and children, they all are fiercely territorial and guarded about people of other races and yet, they are all still capable of survival, bonding and in understanding each other, if they tried.
The fact that Brad Pitt stars is rendered irrelevant by uniformly first-rate performances by the entire ensemble, especially the raw talent from Morocco. Technically, the film, though not as stylised as the director's earlier works, is heart-wrenchingly credible in its portrayal of people with the docu-style cinematography and minimalist background score. Pure cinema, it is.
SUDHISH KAMATH
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