BABEL (R) ****

 

Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. 142 minutes.

Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal, Mohamed Akhzam, Adriana Barraza, Elle Fanning, Nathan Gamble, Clifton Collins Jr., Michael Pena and Rinko Kikuchi. Released by Paramount Pictures.

 

Weaving four interlocking stories in four nations on three continents and portraying today’s world as a modern day Tower of Babel, in which cultures continually clash with one another and people cannot connect because of the numerous language barriers, director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu’s enormously ambitious, wrenchingly intense and emotionally draining Babel is a triumph of filmmaking. The director, whose previous films are Amores Perros and 21 Grams, not only revives his stylistic trait of obsessing about where stories start and finish and showing how every single detail leads to a conclusion in his latest film, but also explores the disconnect caused by language, whether it is people who cannot connect because they speak the same language, people who literally cannot speak or people who can speak but fail to say what is necessary.

 

As in 21 Grams, a single incident leads to another and its ripple effect is seen in four different stories. In the first, we meet two young Moroccan boys and their father, who are learning to shoot a rifle to scare away jackals from their livestock. The family is sold the gun by a neighbor. The boys, one of whom is the more well-behaved and a bad shot and the other who spies on his sister undressing and has good aim with the rifle, set off on their mission and, in the course of a stupid decision, shoot the rifle at an oncoming bus, hitting and wounding a passenger. The boys attempt to hide the truth from their father, as well as the gun, but their actions soon catch up to them.

 

Also in Morocco are a sad-eyed Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan Jones (Cate Blanchett), who have appeared to come to Africa to escape marital problems. She seems impossible, throwing the ice out of her drink at a restaurant, fearing the local water supply, while he seems defeated. On their tour bus, which is filled with prima donna tourists, a stray bullet flies through their window, piercing Susan in the neck. Richard tries to find a hospital, but being that there are none in the desert, he relies on his tour guide to take him to a village, where he struggles to find a doctor for his wife and reach his embassy.

 

Meanwhile, two children – Elle Fanning and Nathan Gamble - whose parents are on vacation are watched over by their nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza), who desperately wants to go to her only son’s wedding in Mexico. But she cannot find anyone to watch the children and decides to take them along with her. The three are joined by Amelia’s nephew Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal), who drinks too much at the wedding celebration, causing them to run into trouble with the border police while reentering the United States from Mexico.

 

On the other side of the world, a young, deaf-mute Japanese girl named Chieko (an excellent Rinko Kikuchi) appears angry at the world. We know her mother recently died and that she lives with her well-intentioned but sullen father. Boys appear to like Chieko until they realize she is deaf and cannot speak. She is prone to flashing them in the mall and making passes at her dentist, not because she is promiscuous, but because she is desperately in need of attention from anyone. She pops some pills, drinks some whiskey and heads off to a nightclub with her friends and some young men. The scene is one of the best portraying disorientation that I have ever seen. Chieko tries to get into the mood of the nightclub, where young people sweat, make out and dance to loud techno music. The film’s sound jumps in and out between the music at the club and the nothingness that Chieko hears.

 

The four stories all connect, even if just slightly, but the point of editing them together in fragments, as Inarritu does, is to show how a random event can lead to cataclysmic circumstances in a corner of the world thousands of miles away. In 21 Grams, the director also spliced together three stories to show how one tragic event can bring three characters together and lead to a near-tragic outcome. Inarritu does the same thing in Babel, as the four stories come close to intersecting with one another. Of course, the biblical reference to the Tower of Babel is utilized here as characters become lost in other countries and become unable to achieve their goals because of language barriers. But other characters, such as Chieko and her father or Pitt and Blanchett, speak the same language but are not able to say what needs to be said.

 

Babel is a complex film – it is not, by any means, difficult to understand, but the manner in which Inarritu connects his stories and characters and the emotional punch of the four stories, which is heightened through meticulous editing, makes for a film that is, at times, devastatingly sad, incredibly suspenseful and often deeply moving. Some characters march to their fate in the steps laid out for them, while some others are given a second chance. And, other characters are left in a questionable state of flux and we are unsure whether their lives are going to change and, if so, for the better or worse. Inarritu sees the modern world as a place becoming intricately complex, where, for the world to survive, nationalities and nations must find a way to communicate. In his world, the innocent pay harsh prices, punishments far outweigh crimes and people must rely on the kindness of people with whom they cannot communicate. Babel is a remarkable, intuitive film reflecting a complex and often frightening ever-changing world.