Emotional high

Moving along four fronts is ideal material for story telling and director Inarritu grabs it with both hands, writes Ervell E. Menezes

TAKE four different incidents (read stories), diverse, disparate and variously located and get these characters, after trudging the wasteland, to overlap. Then try to determine their connectivity. Will these little pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fall into place? Or is it just an ambitious tale of human disconnectivity that goes by the name of Babel? That is for you, dear reader, to find out. For me Babel is easily one of the best films of 2006.

It is Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and scriptwriter Guillermo Arriaga’s last film of a trilogy (the earlier ones being Life is a Bitch 2000 and 21 Grams 2003) but it stands on its own though its style is similar and the cutting and editing impeccable as these four stories unfold in a riveting narrative of changing moods, drama, sexuality and human emotions.

Opening on the aridity of the Moroccan desert, a vast wasteland, it zeroes in on two goat herds (Brouber Ait el Caid and Said Tarchani) who later using their newly acquired rifle to drive away the jackals shoot at a tourist bus. The next story is about two American tourists Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) taking a holiday in Morocco to get over a personal tragedy.

The third is about a Mexican nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza) forced to cross into Mexico with her two Anglo wards to attend a family wedding but lands in trouble because her nephew Santiago has more than the permitted (while driving) share of booze. It is reminiscent of The Border with Jack Nicholson in the lead role.

The last story is set in Tokyo and centred on a deaf-mute teenager, Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), who is discovering her sexuality and is probably inspired by the Marlee Matlin role in Children of a Lesser God.

Ambitiously soaring towards the heavens, this global testament to the curiously incommunicative species called man, it covers a whole gamut of emotions as its players are lost, whether in the desert or the border on in a small Moroccan village. The American tourists, of course, see a terrorist hand. As they run for medical aid for the injured Susan, the husband showers abuse on that Third World country with typical American arrogance. Shades of Flight of the Phoenix, it shows how the different tourists have different agendas and can’t be stopped in the tracks of their enjoyment despite a personal tragedy.

Moving along four fronts is ideal material for story telling and director Inarritu grabs it with both hands but yet refraining from making a glutton of a meal. He devotes equal space to the different fronts, may be a wee bit more to the erotica because it is meant to provide dramatic relief. But it gives Rinko Kikuchi an opportunity to display her protean acting skills while also passing a snide comment on Japanese society.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the connection is established, and what comes across loud and clear is the fact that we scarcely know how the other half of the world lives. It is not surprising that Inarritu picked the Best Director Award at Cannes for the purpose of that festival was to provide an alternative to Hollywood. Sadly, this has not always happened, but hats off to this Mexican director whose undercurrent against the American way of life is always palpable.

Good performances by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza and young Said Taranchi embellish the story but it is basically a triumph of Inarritu and Arriaga with cinematographer Rodrigo Priesto a close third. The closing film of IFFI 06, it is in the same bracket as the opening Spanish film Pedro Almadavor"s Volver (Spain)—a must-see for cinema lovers.

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