2008 Woodie Awards
Babel uses beefy cast to please critics
Joe McPeak '08
Issue date: 11/17/06 Section: Entertainment
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Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett may appear as the starring roles in Babel, giving us the impression of a tension-fueled thriller of international intrigue focusing on the struggles of the couple that they portray, but director Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga have far more up their sleeves here. Viewers will soon learn that there is more than what meets the eye-and ears-in this stunning picture. We are first introduced to the family of Yussef (Boubker Al Caid) and Ahmed (Said Tarchani), who live in the Moroccan desert and have just purchased a Winchester rifle to protect their flock of sheep. Feeling threatened by his brother's superior shooting abilities, Ahmed challenges Yussef to hit an oncoming tour bus from atop the cliff where they are watching the sheep. After the shot is fired, we are given the impression that he has missed. But within a perfectly timed number of seconds we see the bus come to an abrupt stop, causing the two boys to run off in fear of being apprehended.
We soon get a chance to meet Amelia (Adriana Barraza), an illegal immigrant from Mexico working for Richard (Pitt) and Susan (Blanchett), who charge her with watching over their children in San Diego while they are in Morocco despite Amelia's overriding desire to attend her son's wedding in her homeland. We are also taken over to Tokyo to meet Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), a teenage girl who wrestles with her mother's suicide, peer pressure, and sexual frustration as though her being a deaf-mute were not enough for her. And of course, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with these other characters with equal time on the screen, are Richard and Susan on a trip in Morocco, where Susan is shot in the shoulder while riding the bus that catches Ahmed and Yussef's attention.
With so many main characters each with his or her own deeply held goal in mind, Babel is full of protagonists for us to watch. The previously mentioned connections between each story ensures that that they are not confusing for even a minute; it is always clear to the audience what is going on, even though this is hardly the case for the characters themselves. This is Babel's main mental punch-it capitalizes on the basic problems of human misunderstanding. We see how people encounter crises and struggle to resolve them due to a basic inability to understand one another. This is comes as a result of language barriers, as we see Pitt almost lose patience with an interpreter while trying to provide medical attention to his wife, and of course as Chieko has to exert more of an effort than others in order to engage in basic interaction with others. Arriaga writes other such moments into his script as well, such as when we hear that the US government is quick to write off Susan's shooting in Morocco as the work of terrorists and thus cuts off ties with the country while Richard and Susan are in danger, and Amelia's difficulties in safely returning home with Susan and Richard's children challenge any presumptions that we might have about our current institutions.
We soon get a chance to meet Amelia (Adriana Barraza), an illegal immigrant from Mexico working for Richard (Pitt) and Susan (Blanchett), who charge her with watching over their children in San Diego while they are in Morocco despite Amelia's overriding desire to attend her son's wedding in her homeland. We are also taken over to Tokyo to meet Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), a teenage girl who wrestles with her mother's suicide, peer pressure, and sexual frustration as though her being a deaf-mute were not enough for her. And of course, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with these other characters with equal time on the screen, are Richard and Susan on a trip in Morocco, where Susan is shot in the shoulder while riding the bus that catches Ahmed and Yussef's attention.
With so many main characters each with his or her own deeply held goal in mind, Babel is full of protagonists for us to watch. The previously mentioned connections between each story ensures that that they are not confusing for even a minute; it is always clear to the audience what is going on, even though this is hardly the case for the characters themselves. This is Babel's main mental punch-it capitalizes on the basic problems of human misunderstanding. We see how people encounter crises and struggle to resolve them due to a basic inability to understand one another. This is comes as a result of language barriers, as we see Pitt almost lose patience with an interpreter while trying to provide medical attention to his wife, and of course as Chieko has to exert more of an effort than others in order to engage in basic interaction with others. Arriaga writes other such moments into his script as well, such as when we hear that the US government is quick to write off Susan's shooting in Morocco as the work of terrorists and thus cuts off ties with the country while Richard and Susan are in danger, and Amelia's difficulties in safely returning home with Susan and Richard's children challenge any presumptions that we might have about our current institutions.
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