According to the 11th chapter of the Old Testament's Genesis, the Tower of Babel was a tower that was to be erected by a united humanity in order to reach the heavens. An un-flattered God saw the construction of the tower not as a symbol of man's respect for him and his kingdom, but as a demonstration of man's ambitious pride and arrogance. The spiteful God then went on to punish the people by confusing their one language and spreading them out all over the earth, making it impossible for them to communicate and thus complete the construction of the tower. In the Bible, this story is the supposed origin of the variety of languages and races among human beings and is the explanation for why the world is so linguistically and culturally diverse today.
The story of the Tower of Babel is the source of the title of Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu ("21 Grams") and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga's latest collaboration, "Babel." The film draws little from the biblical scripture itself, focusing primarily on the resulting predicament of humanity's linguistic and racial disconnection. The lengthy movie, shot in six different languages (Spanish, English, Japanese, Arabic, Berber and sign language) spanning three continents, amasses a work that is nearly as ambitious as the tower the title refers to. The result is an evocative and compelling multi-layered story of separation, sadness and hope in our disjointed contemporary world. Unlike the tower in the biblical scripture, "Babel" achieves its ambition without God's intervention through its melancholic but hopeful story of how there is more connecting us than language.
González Iñárritu and Arriaga are notorious for plotlines that do not follow a chronological order. They do not make movies for the passive viewer, and their puzzle-like narratives often present episodes and chapters of stories in a jumbled, nonlinear order, provoking the audience's curiosity and active engagement in piecing together the stories. In this way, "Babel" does not stray far from its predecessors. As it attempts to represent our segregated world, it uses this temporally enigmatic narrative style effectively to tell the story of "Babel" — one of cultural, racial and linguistic severance.
To add to the temporal discontinuity of this film, González Iñárritu and Arriaga juxtapose several simultaneous stories whose relation is initially unclear until they become linked in the end. The movie specifically chronicles four distinct plotlines, each occurring in different places around the globe. The first episode is the story of two brothers, Ahmad and Yussef (Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait El Caid), and their family in a rural village in the desert of Morocco. Their misfortune comes early in the film: While testing the range of a new rifle, the boys accidentally shoot a woman on a tour bus passing along the road. This event leads to a subsequent story of the victims of this tragic accident, but later returns to the affliction of the shooters and their family as they are pursued by the Moroccan police.
Inside the tour bus are Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett), an American couple vacationing in Morocco in an attempt to resolve their marriage — one that has been impaired by the recent death of their newborn son. However, as they finally begin to settle the tensions between one another in the tour bus, a bullet comes through the window. The film then incorporates two other distinct stories into the narrative. One of these stories follows Richard and Susan's children (Elle Fanning and Nathan Gamble), who are back in southern California being looked after by their Mexican housekeeper, Amelia (Adriana Barraza). Complications arise when Amelia and her nephew, Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal) try to bring the kids to Mexico for her son's wedding. The discontinuity between these three stories works well to reflect the distress of each situation and exhibits the far-reaching ramifications of an action.
However, the fourth installment seems to be the movie's weak point, as its relation to the other stories is insubstantial. After looking at the consequences of the shooting, the narrative then switches gears to follow a deaf teenage Japanese schoolgirl named Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) in Tokyo. She can only communicate through sign language and thus feels alienated from her father, her friends and society. Her frustrations and insecurities lead her to strive for sexual attention. However, as each attempt is denied, her isolation and depression slowly amplify. While the three other stories are concretely connected, this story is the only one whose link is slightly ambiguous and underdeveloped. The story of Chieko works adequately independently, but her place in the larger picture of movie is never fully satisfied, leaving this specific episode's incoherence as one of the shortcomings of the film.
From the non-actors (mainly those in the on-location Moroccan scenes) to the Hollywood stars (Pitt, Blanchett), the actors' performances transcend language barriers. Through excellent physical acting, the stars are able to evoke the emotions and sensations essential to the story: sorrow, frustration and anguish. This demonstrates how the visual qualities of acting can speak just as loudly as the aural ones, suggesting that language is not the only means of communication in the world. Brad Pitt, in particular, stands out in perhaps one of the best performances of his career. Gael Garcia Bernal, generally being a protagonist in his prior roles ("The King" being an exception), proves himself a dynamic actor as he plays a character of questionable ethics in the film.
It is through the combination of superb acting and fragmented style of the narrative that Iñárritu and Arriaga's messages shines through. Our world is separated by more than physical borders or barriers; it is separated by language, culture and race. While our segregation is predominant, as humans we still share emotions that transcend any linguistic explanation or cultural standard. "Babel" is an excellent look at the relationships in our contemporary world between strangers, friends and families. Its ambitious magnitude and relevance to our modern world serve to make it one of the most important and powerful films of the year.
Grade: 4 out of 5
