enzarto

Babel tells the story of intertwining narratives across several characters and their lives, and how their predicaments are interrelated. A nanny is eager to attend her son's wedding, but she is unable to find a temporary babysitter for two children she is charged with guardianship over. Thus she decides to take the children with her across border to Mexico. The children's parents are travelling in Morocco, and while on a touring bus, the wife is shot by a native Moroccan boy, who is with his brother trying out a his father's rifle on a mountaintop. The father of the two boys, Ibrahim Hassad, is now wanted by the local police and for a part of the plot, attempts his escape after discovering the shooting which has now also become an international story. Finally the rife was given to him prior to the events of the story by a Japanese man who was hunting in Morocco. The man believed he had a formidable hunting guide, and as a token of his gratitude, gives the guide this rifle, which eventually is sold to the father of these two boys. The film itself overall was very engaging, and due to the multiple characters and the dimensional plot, the audience will remain very interested in what happens next, and ultimately how it ends. However, the necessity of some of the characters certainly comes into question as the film draws to its close. For example, the Japanese man's purpose in the story was solely that he had given a rifle to a Moroccan hunting guide. However there is a subplot to his life, in that he has a daughter who deals with how her peers perceive her deafness, and a wife who committed suicide, however her method of suicide is purposely posed in the film as an undiscovered truth with some suggestions. The daughter's character is probably the most interesting character in the film, and the director's portrayal of her deaf experience is admirable and prone to empathy. However, the daughter's purpose in the overall plot that attempts to bring narratives to crossroads is a painfully pointless appendix, and a frustrating hindrance to the story. She does not affect the film in anyway if she were to be removed, especially the detail of the dead wife. Besides the daughter who is actually a character that poses dimension, humanized situations that create an engaging audience, the other characters, with the slight exception of the boy who shot the American woman, are very uninteresting. In a general sense, one would wish that the American women survives, but sadly if she did not, hearts wouldn't be broken. She isn't a character that the story makes you care for, and neither is Brad Pitt's. Some of the events are also rather implausible and poorly conveyed. For instance, a nanny who is both an an illegal immigrant and employee of these two American parents, would certainly take extra caution and perhaps sacrifice her opportunity to attend her son's wedding in order to avoid putting the two children in serious danger, and to keep her own life secure and prevent deportation. Regardless of this very true point, the plot still, has this way of being very engaging. While the Japanese daughter is the most interesting character in the film, she takes serious risks with a legal official, by attempting to lure to perform sexual activity with her. While her desire for a sexual life which perhaps remains deprived and unexperimented with her condition, her choice of risk is not believable. The story was very well presented and the film was beautifully expressed. But expression can be beautiful and also pointless, and the film tends to possess this quality of great plot drive, but to no avail. The film is a journey with a destination that is frustrating, because the journey should not have set off in the first place, but for reasons unmentioned it simply fails to be a great movie, and a bad movie.