Babel: tragic misunderstandings

Babel is not about the separation of peoples due to language diferences, as shown in the biblical account. Director Alejandro Iñárritu builds a plot that crosses stories of people visiting foreign lands and interfering, with banal acts, in the culture of the people.

It is not a matter of not understanding different languages, since, in one way or another, everyone ends up understanding each other. What you see, in the stories that intersect, are not problems in speech, but in listening. Some misunderstandings follow. Sometimes with tragic consequences.

Without spoilers, the stories in the movie are as follows: a Japanese businessman (Kôji Yakusho) goes hunting in Morocco and gives his guide a rifle as a gift. This man sells the gun to a friend, who needs to kill some jackals that threaten his goats.

The two Moroccan boys, who graze the goats, decide to test the rifle and shoot a bus hitting an American tourist (Cate Blanchett). The world media claims it was a terrorist act. The tourist's husband (Brad Pitt) calls home and asks that his children's nanny (Adriana Barraza) stay with the children and not go to a wedding in Mexico. But she will.

In Japan, a police officer seeks information from the businessman who donated the gun but ended up getting involved with his teenage daughter (Rinko Kikuchi). She is deaf and dumb, has gone through the tragic loss of her mother and is having difficulties in dealing with her sexuality.

The four stories, well-marked by the precise cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto, should not have any connection between them. They all act in good faith, with great intentions, but by small mistakes, none of them criminals, everything goes wrong.

The end of the movie takes place in a Tokyo skyscraper and is representative of the communication problems that characterize Babel. The Chieko girl experiences the pain that led her mother to kill herself. The father arrives and seems to understand that the daughter's pain is not being unable to hear, but the pain of not being heard.

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