Babel

I saw babel yesterday.It wrenched my heart out.Im glad that i ushered in the new year with two good movies...babel and capote....

though critiques liken Babel to Crash because of the interlocking structure of three parallel plotlines in terms of different lives revolving around one dominant incident..(here it is the firing of a rifle in morroco and how it affects the lives of a Mexican governess,an american couple, and a japanese father-daughter ), I preferred Babel because it poignantly educes the difference in conditions of first and third world countries and the issue of how the very existence of immigrants has come to be illegal in the country of america which is fervently making draconian laws agaisnt immigrants(despite America being a country of immigrants).In Babel,the very white skinned amreican tourists were willing to abandon Brad pitt and his wife in the middle of a middle Eastern country.She is shot at accidentally by a goatherd and American investigations flout it as a terrorist attack.It is the locals (so called terrorists) who come to their rescue.This incident actually brings the couple closer who are desperately trying to slavage their marriage. The visuals of the far-flung places are visceral.The film stresses on the need to circumvent communication barriers and prejudices.The Japanese deaf-mute girl delivers an excellent performance as a sex-starved teenager(i felt though that this part of the plot was a bit of a misfit).Crash also attempts to do that but Crash for me earns negative points since i felt that it somewhere trivialised the systematic longstanding discrimination against blacks in america in its efforts to drive home the message that we are all at heart prejudiced...so in that sense i thought it was insidious.Babel despite the irony and the muddle takes a stand.

The name Babel is derived from a tale from teh Bible..where the tower of babylon is built by people to reach heaven and people invent different languages and lose their way in this morass and confusion and fail to meet the desired end....