Babel

Babel

Cultures that do not share languages, values, frames of reference, or physical realities are even more separated. “Babel,” which interlaces stories from Morocco, America, Mexico and Japan all triggered by the senseless act of a child is the third and most powerful of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s trilogy of films in which the action is connected or influenced in invisible ways (sometimes called “hyperlink films”). After “Amores Perros” (2000) and “21 Grams” (2003), it demonstrates his mastery of the form and surprises us by offering human insight instead of obligatory tragedy.

But let me piece together the stories chronologically. A Japanese businessman goes on a hunting trip to Morocco, and gives his guide a rifle. The guide sells it to a friend, who needs it to shoot jackals attacking his sheep. The friend’s small son fires at a tourist bus from an enormous distance.

An American woman on the bus is hit. Her Mexican nanny, in San Diego with her charge’s two children, has been told not to leave them but does not want to miss her son’s wedding; she takes them with her into Mexico. Police investigation into the rifle ties back to consequences for the Japanese man’s unhappy daughter.

Yes but “Babel” is much more than these plot summaries strung together. The movie is not about how each culture wreaks hatred and violence on another (that would be too easy) but about how each tries to behave well and is handicapped by misperceptions.

“Babel” could have been one of those routine recitals of man’s inhumanity toward man, but Inarritu has something deeper and kinder to say: When we are strangers in a strange land we can bring trouble upon ourselves and our hosts; before our latest Mars probe blasted off it was scrubbed so as not to take Earth microbes to the other planet; all the characters in this film are carriers of cultural microbes.

Think about Yussef (Boubker Ait El Caid), the Moroccan boy. He lives happily with his family, herds sheep, plays with his brother Ahmed. Two alien organisms enter his system: A high-powered rifle, and a tourist bus. Over an enormous distance he childishly fires at one with the other, and gravely wounds Susan (Cate Blanchett), an American tourist. Her husband Richard (Brad Pitt) demands doctors, ambulances, helicopters; he has to make do with a kindly local man who takes Susan into his home and summons what the village has by way of medical care.

American authorities immediately tag it as a terrorist act. The Moroccan government refuses to send a helicopter because it insists it harbors no terrorists. This becomes a worldwide news story reported in cable cliches. The other tourists on the bus led by an outraged Brit insist on leaving them behind; partly because the bus driver insists on saving gas by not turning on the air conditioning in that land where the locals have no choice but to live with heat: As ripples from the original event spread wider, lost are facts.

The American couple lives 45 minutes north of the Mexican border. Susan has arranged for her sister to watch their children while the nanny (Adriana Barraza) attends her son’s wedding. But the sister cannot come, the nanny cannot find a substitute, and in desperation she gets her nephew (Gael Garcia Bernal) to drive them all to the wedding. Returning to America, they are properly questioned by U. S. border authorities, but the nephew (who has been drinking, and knows his aunt is an unregistered worker) runs the border, is pursued, and leaves the nanny and children in the desert intending to return.

How could she take them to Mexico? How could she miss her son’s wedding? Yes, but how could he leave them in the desert? He drank at the wedding.

It turns out that we have no villains here; even less do we really have heroes. Nor did anyone do anything wrong. Susan was essentially injured by culture clash. Her husband couldn’t feel with Adriana about going to see her son get married because he was too upset about his wife (“I’ll pay for a bigger wedding,” he says.). The boys should be safe with their Auntie they’re loved there!

He shouldn’t have been drinking but it was his cousin’s wedding! What can you expect! And yes why wouldn’t U.S immigration ask questions when two Mexicans one drunk try crossing over midnight with three kids not theirs?!

When the movie came out, some people complained that the Japanese plot of the film was brought in against its will. But that’s not true at all. “Babel” is about how none of these people need to have met, how unlikely it is that all of this can happen and yet it does, so there you go.

Sexually insecure adolescents turn up in Japan and Morocco. Cops in both countries are just doing their jobs; they don’t know any more than their information tells them (which is true of any number of adults on the bus). These guys are used to getting their way with women any women and now they’ve wound up somewhere where nobody knows or cares who they are.

Technically speaking, “Babel” might seem like what we call an Idiot Plot, where one word or sentence would clear everything up at many points. But these aren’t idiots, and they want to say that word or sentence very badly indeed only (a) a language barrier keeps them from it; (b) cultural assumptions do; (c) others’ inability to hear/understand things as they’re actually said does; and (d) when that happens everybody just falls into some well-established script made from prejudice and misunderstanding.

Inarritu films in sorrow rather than anger, saving most of his characters tragic retribution because he loves them too much not to grind them in a plot: This is a movie about people who do what we might do if we were them which we’re not, but then it’s always useful to remember that they’re not us either.

Inarritu (born 1963) is one of three friends I’ve been calling the New Mexican Cinema, though there’ll be other names included as well. Guillermo Del Toro made “Pan’s Labyrinth,” Alfonso Cuaron did “Children of Men,” etc.; those three titles are adornments of recent cinema.

For some reason an entire country (France, Sweden, Brazil, South Korea, Iran, Germany) will periodically turn out a brilliant generation; this is happening now in Mexico. And though we’ve got the dubbing advantage here in America it’s our gain and not their loss most overseas audiences have long since gotten used to it even with movies done in their own languages.

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