Director Alejandro González Iñárritu may well feel as if he has achieved part of what he set out to achieve no matter to what extent you may deem the four stories of his new film, Babel, to be connected with one another.
The links are hardly difficult to ascertain, since they are spelled out quite explicitly, and the importance that the viewer attaches to them constitutes an important theme in the film, one that is more a result of, rather than driven by, the narrative style.
Iñárritu challenges the audience - taken to three continents and driven across the US-Mexico border - to evaluate the ability of themselves and the characters that he portrays, to communicate with each other.
Examples are aplenty from the film; in Japan sign language, the predominant means of communication between businessman widower Cheiko and his deaf daughter, Yasujiro, is a language in which Cheiko is only partially fluent in; Americans Richard and Susan struggle to confront their marital problems on holiday in Morocco; and in Mexico, Santiago and aunt Amelia have problems getting across their reasons for wanting to enter America to border control officials.
It harks back to Iñárritu’s first film, Amores Perros, and to a lesser extent the follow-up 21 Grams, that each story takes a significant turn for the worse, and, recalling Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem For a Dream, leaves the audience guessing as to when the downward spiral will end.
In Amores Perros, a car crash at the beginning of the film was the event that the three main characters, each with their own separate lives, shared, unbeknown to each other. The shooting of a tourist in Morocco is a similar such moment in Babel; Susan is shot after two Moroccan brothers Youssef and Ahmed resolve to test the power of their family’s newly acquired rifle.
Iñárritu casts the hinted-at lack of communication in the leading and lurking role of underlying machiavellian villain, concurrently electing to show the short-term turning points in what is a false limelight. Susan’s shooting, Yasujiro’s sexual rejection and Amelia’s act of losing the children entrusted in her care, are events that appear accidental, but Iñárritu surely doesn’t believe in their innocence.
What must be at least equally as likely as this is that Iñárritu’s finger points beyond the characters and their situations. Although the specifics of his distaste are only hinted at, they are at least hinted at by the manner in which the media is responsible for placing Susan’s life in considerable danger when it’s meddling delays her transfer to a hospital.
The questions that the director may well be asking of the audience are the following: to what extent do the turning points act as precursors to the flowing of communication that was previously lacking, and: to what extent is the film one story, and to what extent is it four stories?
