Progressive Wednesday

The TGIF Movie Review: Babel

June 22nd, 2007 by Matt

Babel starts like this: “It’s almost new. Three hundred cartridges. The guy who gave it to me said you can hit as far as three kilometers.” Why? Because, on the surface, Babel is about a single gun. In this way, and in this way alone, this is a simple movie.

On another level, however, “Babel” is a reference to Genesis 11:1-9,[1] and the Tower of Babel. The New International Version translates the story this way:

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel — because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

So how is this film about the confounding of language? Babel has five different languages and four settings — Morocco, San Diego, Mexico, and Japan — and many of the events are told out of sequence. The story lines appear separate, but come quietly and violently together; they end up weaving together in ways that call to mind the films Magnolia, Short Cuts, and Crash.

In Morocco, we have a goatherder and his family, and we also have Richard and Susan (played by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, respectively) on vacation, trying to resurrect their marriage. In San Diego, we have Amelia (played by 2006 Oscar-nominee Adriana Barraza), the live-in caretaker of two children. In Mexico, we have Amelia’s family, and the location of her son’s imminent wedding. And in Japan, we have Chieko (played by 2006 Oscar-nominee Rinko Kikuchi), a deaf student, longing for empathy, love, and a better sense of her own sexuality. In short, for much of the film, words fall short of their intended meanings or instead get ignored. I’d rather not write more than that for fear of spoiling the plot. But I will tell you this: follow the gun.

The acting in Babel, top to bottom, is by far the best I’ve seen all year, and once again leaves me dumb-founded, wondering the following: How, in the name of all that is holy and sacred, did Jennifer Hudson win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Dreamgirls, a movie that is to the history of cinema what knock-knock jokes are to the history of comedy? And how did Brad Pitt — vulnerable and enraged, weary and weeping — get ignored?

But back to the movie and away from my silly rage: Babel is a film about miscommunication, the problems created by the exaggerating, ignorant and fear-inducing news, the tragedies of lies, and the pining we share for an understanding from our brothers and sisters on this planet, an understanding that reaches deeper than level of language. Babel, in short, reminds us that suffering and sorrow can be communicated regardless of language. But more importantly, we are reminded of this: kindness, in its various permutations, is universal too.

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[1] Many interpret the story this way: the lesson to be learned is that humanity is inherently flawed, but forgets this; God destroys the tower to reduce humanity’s hubris and potential defiance.