Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, “Babel” weaves stories in four different countries, all connected by the thoughtless act of a child, and depicts the alienation between cultures and individuals.
A careless Moroccan boy, carrying a gun which is originally from Japan, shoots at a bus full of travelers from all over the world, and eventually wounds the wife of an American couple. In America, a Mexican nanny has to take care of the couple's children since no one else is available. To attend her son's wedding, the nanny boldly takes the two American children to Mexico. All are tied together because of the gun.
Why is it a gun but not something else that is used to connect everything in the movie?
The gun is a metaphor for violence and conflict. When people can’t communicate or understand each other, there can only be confrontations.
It seems like globalization has the whole world connected. But in this connected world, walls of different cultures and different individuals are everywhere to separate and alienate people from each other. As a result, human beings are all living in their own world with hardly any understanding of others.
Walls between civilizations are easier to understand, people are separated because of the differences in their cultures, which possibly do not share languages, values, frames of reference, or physical realities.
Americans seem to have the self-righteousness to condescend to everyone else around the world. Yet they also live in a world of fear of thinking everyone else wants something from them. The wife throws away the ice in the restaurant, worried about it being unsanitary; An accident is associated with terrorism because an American citizen is involved; The American children feel unease and fear when they first arrive in Mexico.....
America not only treats people from its neighboring country as suspected criminals but also has a condescending attitude to every other county in the world. From the movie, some Moroccans and Mexicans see Americans as rich and noble people and even look up to them all because of the power and wealth of their country. How can cultures understand each other when condescending and alienation proceed? When people separate each other just based on the differences in their cultures and nationalities, how can individuals connect to one another?
With walls between individuals, throughout the movie, we see all kinds of conflicts between individuals: the hatred and incomprehension between the Japanese daughter and her father; the American couple being in a crisis of marriage; Sussan being injured and her fellow passengers leaving without them; the conflicts between the Moroccan brothers for being the favorite son; the deaf Japanese girl feeling unaccepted by others and trying to get accepted offering to have sex with men; The rudeness and brutality of the Moroccan police towards the Moroccan villagers and the shepherd father and sons.
Everyone is living in their world and sees the world and others from their specific point of view. Everyone is stuck inside their walls, lonely and scared, yet unable to get out.
Humans are selfish from a genetic point of view. People always consider themselves first and regard others as objects of their subjective world, which results in people never thoroughly understanding and connecting with others.
As the subtitle at the end of the film puts it:
“To my child, the brightest light in the darkest night.”
It’s said that the end of the darkest night is the brightest light. But how long will the darkest night last? Until when is the brightest light showing up? Is it when the American couple kisses each other for reconciliation? When the Japanese father and daughter embrace each other? But What about the Mexican nanny who’s being deported from the place she lived for 16 years? What about the family of the Moroccan herdsman? With the elder son seriously wounded and probably dying, and the younger son and the father probably ending up in prison for terrorism, what’s the brightest light for them?
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