Babel

[MacGuffin]

For "Babel" director, pictures tell the story

If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, then movie audiences should easily be able to grasp the challenging story in "Babel" even though it is told in Arabic, English, Spanish, Japanese and even sign language.

"Babel," starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, debuts in U.S. theaters on Friday with a global tale of how languages and cultural traditions divide people more than distance or personal ideologies. It expands nationwide in coming weeks.

"The most difficult challenge in this film ... was to get rid of text and find how to translate these words -- and in this case three continents, five languages and four stories, all these diverse elements -- into one, single visual language," said Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

Apparently, he was up to the challenge. Inarritu won the best director's trophy at the Cannes film festival in May, and "Babel" is earning wide praise from critics and industry watchers who put it high on this year's list of must-see Oscar hopefuls.

Success also has brought news reports of a feud between Inarritu and "Babel" screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, with whom he worked on earlier highly acclaimed films "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams."

Inarritu confirmed that they have stopped working together, but he called Arriaga an "essential and incredible talent, partner and collaborator in the three films."

"We feel sad that this kind of gossip, or focus, has been more in the ending of the relationship -- it had run its course, naturally -- instead of focusing on the product of that work," Inarritu said.

THE LANGUAGE OF 'BABEL'

"Babel" interweaves four stories. Moroccan boys take their father's rifle to practice shoot. Two U.S. tourists (Blanchett and Pitt) are victims of an errant bullet from the rifle. In San Diego, problems arise when a Mexican nanny takes the Americans' kids across the border, and in Tokyo, a deaf teenager copes in dangerous ways with the death of her mom.

The film utilizes four small, personal stories about husbands, wives, fathers, mothers and children to comment on a big, global problem of how a lack of understanding and respect for different people and cultures can spark violence.

"Babel" challenges audiences intellectually, yet Inarritu has simplified the delivery of the movie's themes by using personal stories to which audiences can relate.

"I didn't want this film to be a judge or a preacher. I wanted it to be subtle and (have) compassion even for the policemen and institutions," Inarritu said.

The film's title is derived from the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel, which humans built to reach heaven. But God saw it as a symbol of defiance. He gave people different languages, so they could not speak to each other and finish the tower. Then, God scattered humans to different parts of the world.

Inarritu means the title to be a call to unity, and say to people of different cultures and languages around the world that they should embrace -- not fear -- differences.

He said the movie's themes and topics have been swirling in his head since 2003, and "Babel" was a way to purge himself.

Asked if he felt he had now said all he wanted, Inarritu's answer is, perhaps characteristically, rather simple.

"Yep," he said.

[Fernando]

arriaga is a terrible writer, it's fairly obvious who is the better of the duo.

Sadly, both of them think they are the second coming in their respective field, Arriaga almost thinks as if he is the mexican Shakepeare and Iñarritu...whoever he thinks is worthy of comparing to himself, and it's sad because being mexican I should be happy these two are having so much succes only that some interviews I 've read they sound so full of themselves and I don't like ppl like that.

While I don't agree with Pete that Arriaga is a terrible writer nor I think he is great but he is good, and as for Iñarritu I do think he has talent, Amores Perros was an awesome flim but 21 Grams wasn't, and I'd like to see him do something non fragmented and if possible to shut him up about how he does EVERYTHING in his films and how precious his final cut is otherwise he won't move a finger. 

My support right now is for Cuarón and Del Toro, I'm eagerly waiting for Children of Men and hope is really great, I want to see Babel too of course but AGI's attitude puts me off.

[Chest Rockwell]

"You can feel lonely in Tokyo even when you're surrounded by people."

yeah, not like a terribly overrated tour-de-shit hasn't been made about that subject already.

Get over it, already.

[MacGuffin]

Interview: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

With the release of Babel, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu completes an important triptych of films. His first effort, 2000's Amores Perros, established him as a daring and ambitious filmmaker; his second, the Oscar-nominated 21 Grams, proved that he was more than a one-hit wonder. And his latest effort demonstrates that the Mexican native can hold his own as one of the great voices of modern cinema.

IGN recently spoke to Inarritu at the Los Angeles press day for Babel. In addition to discussing the completion of his unofficial "trilogy," the director talked at length about collaborating with both movie stars and nonprofessional actors, and addressed the social and political undercurrent of his often-harrowing tales.

IGN Movies: The press notes describe Babel as part of a trilogy when looked at with Amores Perros and 21 Grams. Did you see it that way when you conceived it?
   
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: No, I thought about the trilogy [before] I was conceiving Babel. I was in pre-production for 21 Grams and around those days -- which was 2003 -- I thought about this idea, this concept of one of them happening in one country and then having an effect, a tsunami miles away. I thought it was a good possibility to close that trilogy, which started with Amores Perros in a local way, in a foreign way as 21 Grams and then on a global scale. I thought it was a good way to find a triptych.

IGN: Is it important that the different characters are not aware of their counterparts in other countries?

Inarritu: People always say, "This guy is playing with the same structure." And I think that Amores Perros is such a different structure. Amores Perros is three stories that interconnect in one moment, which is the car accident. 21 Grams is only one story told by three different points of view, but they are really physically connected -- literally, with the heart. I think that Babel, differently, are four stories that are never connected physically. They never see the face of each other; the actors met once at Cannes. But they are emotionally connected, so my job was to find the right visual language to make four stories that apparently should not have physical connections form a whole. That was the experiment, which was very different from the other two. But formally it's four stories that have to do with one another. The reason that I call it a trilogy is because they are about parents and children; thematically, it's more important for me why they are a trilogy than formally.

IGN: So after this film will you abandon the idea of interconnected stories?

Inarritu: I don't know, to tell you the truth. The interconnecting thing is more about the curiosity that I have. It's something I think that's not about style itself; I think every story has a way to be told, and these three stories were better told this way. So my responsibility is to find the best way to tell them. But I don't think so. Maybe the next one is a monologue, straightforward and that's it. Something simple.

IGN: This is obviously your most ambitious movie thus far. How important was it to have Brad Pitt in the cast to make it happen?

Inarritu: Well, it's a very low-budget film, to tell you the truth. It wasn't a problem of getting the money; the money was there before Brad Pitt. I thought it would be a challenge to have somebody who is as recognizable as him. Iit was not an obvious choice but the challenge of transformation -- which is the art -- I think he was attracted to that to. And to have an American icon like him that has such magnetism and attraction, you can feel empathy immediately with this guy. He has that power to get people in touch, so I thought it was a good choice to have beyond any economical thing. I felt it was a good way to start the film.

IGN: Was it your decision to make Brad look older?

Inarritu: I wanted him to be older. I think it was a necessary thing just to get the man who has been going through very difficult emotional times. That helped him a lot. But I think the most important thing in an actor is not a physical transformation or a make-up thing; it's internal. I think he did a good job feeling not the Troy guy; you can feel that he's weak, and that's about the acting more than the exterior thing.

IGN: What was the collaborative process like with Brad and Cate Blanchett?

Inarritu: Well, I think it's a combination. I tried to be as helpful as possible. I tried to really delineate and inform them -- communicate and be very clear what I think the scene is about. What is the dramatic objective of that character? What kind of action can guide them to make them achieve that? But, obviously, I'm always open to ideas and possibilities; sometimes I'm very meticulous, but sometimes I'm not. It depends on what I think is clear because I'm seeing the whole thing. I was the only one in every country who knew from where I came or where I'm going, so they have to trust in me that sense. But with actors like Cate, you trust in her instincts. So it's a collaboration, but it depends on which scene. Sometimes they need you; sometimes they don't need you. Sometimes you are just admiring her craft.

IGN: It sounds like you have a good relationship with Pitt. Where did that develop from?

Inarritu: I worked with him on a Japanese jeans commercial five years ago and we had a good time. So after five years, I just approached him and talked to him about the concept and what I wanted to do. I think what Brad has is an over-the-edge kind of feeling; he likes to challenge, he likes to risk, and I think that speaks a lot about who he is.

IGN: How was it working with non-actors?

Inarritu: That was a nightmare, a very irresponsible decision that I made 17 days before shooting and I didn't have one actor. I turned to the towns, I found them in the streets and it was very, very difficult. To direct non-actors is difficult, but in a language that you don't understand directing non-actors is like suicidal. Combining with actors, it's really bad. It's difficult. But it was really rewarding when suddenly I got something, and we would find emotion. They were really fantastic. I mean, I want to say that I was so lucky to find these people. They surprised me; my philosophy now is that you can make anybody in the world act. If that person has a nature close to what you need for the character -- because they need to have something that sparks the nature or the spirit of the character -- then you can just pull that fire and it works. But you have to look for them; that's the difficult part.

IGN: You're part of a canon of directors like Fernando Meirelles and Alfonso Cuaron who are telling stories on a more global scale. Do you feel a sense of responsibility when you are coming up with ideas to continue on this path rather than acquiescing to something more conventional?

Inarritu: No, I don't have any responsibility. My responsibility is to make a film and find my dramatic language; I don't have any political or social responsibility. I do what really I like to talk about; all of the things I talk about in Babel are things I am passionate about and am bothered by them or want to express them or just that my heart and my mind are filled with. So all of those things are really very close to me, and I try to make them an extension of myself. It's a testimony of my vital experience with who I am, but I don't feel the need to be finding something to fill expectations or whatever.

IGN: That said, there are a lot of social underpinnings to the emotional story told in Babel. Was that just a subtext for the stories that you wanted to tell, or did they come first and you found a fictional narrative to frame those issues?

Inarritu: There are political and social comments in it that I wanted to be clear, but not obvious and not judging. I don't want to make films about politics or politicians; I dislike them a lot, especially now. Why bother working to express who these people are when they are on TV on all of the time. They are basically clowns that are just doing things for self-image; it's not about helping people in societies any more, so why bother to make a film about that? I was very interested in politics of the human things, very intimate things. Obviously there's a criticism of the institutions and there's a very obvious pointing out of the paranoid state that now this regime of George Bush is having -- about terrorism, about immigration, and I think they are relating one thing that doesn't have to do with the other. Like doing everything that they can to make sure the racism and xenophobia and fascist world will return to this century, and that's really scary, I think.

IGN: Were the visuals predetermined or did you just develop a color palette and a look for the film at the individual locations?

Inarritu: I found first the locations, the towns, and then we brought in the production designer and Rodrigo [Prieto, the cinematographer], and we would find [a look]. Each story is shot indifferent formats: Morocco is shot in 16mm, Mexico is 35mm, Japan is shot in an anamorphic lens. So each of them is different, but combined in a way that make a character and uniqueness in each one. The palettes mark every character, but the difficult thing was not to separate them; it was to give them a character but at the same time there's a congress of all of them. Obviously the camera movements should be congruent with what the characters need and the story... what it's about. And so it's a lot of decisions -- minimal, not in your face but there is an undercurrent visual romantic thing that's going on.

IGN: You must have a wonderful relationship with your editor.

Inarritu: (laughs) Yeah, Stephen Mirrione is one of the best collaborators at that stage that make my life easier. He really helped me find an order in my chaotic system. He really is more of a sculptor than and editor. He really is a very smart guy.

IGN: What was your most fun moment?

Inarritu: What is that? (laughs) I had fun in Japan; I think I had a lot of fun. Shooting the scenes in the discotheque or walking with the kids through the discotheque. Well, it was fun because it was dangerous because police were chasing us all of the time trying to get us in jail. So we were hiding and that was fun. There is no permission there. There is no film commission, so they don't give a damn; it's not about money, it's a society that doesn't allow you to shoot because you will destroy the order of a society that is built on corporations. There is no individuality there, so anything that you do will destroy the ant mechanism. So we had P.A.s who were hired just in case the police arrived they would be in jail, not us.

IGN: Chieko's story requires her to be both physically and emotionally bare. How do you make an actress comfortable enough to be able to be that open?

Inarritu: I think she was very [connected] to the character. Once somebody's right for the character, which is 80 percent of my job -- to find it in the world, which is not easy -- but once you find them then your life is easier. It's her nature; she was so into the character that it wasn't even a problem. At first I thought she was very shy, very silent, almost like a sign-language girl. And she's not; she was just playing, and she was all in her own character all of the time. It's a lot of discipline, I think.
   
IGN: There's a sense of expectation or anticipation in almost every scene of the movie. Would you attribute that to the writing or the directing or editing?

Inarritu: Well, there are a lot of things that I decided on set. All of that scene with the drugs, it wasn't written like that. It was a friend's house, and I thought it was a real opportunity to get in her shoes and really make the audience experience what it is to be on drugs in Japan and be a deaf Japanese which is a very strange kind of possibility. I wanted to shoot everything from her perspective and through the audio, just that scene in particular the audio becomes a very powerful tool to fight against the tyranny of images. So the audio is guiding you through a place to experience a discotheque in silence, just to have that perspective, is a very powerful thing, I think. I just created it; I improvise a lot of things and I was just with the camera finding how she would be looking to the world in that moment. I improvise that kind of thing at times.

IGN: Your films seldom spell out the action or lead the audience by the hand -- exemplified by the shifting time structure. You leave it to us to put everything together instead of explaining where and when you are going.

Inarritu: I think the nature of filmmaking, the experience of going to the theater and watching a movie is a very emotional experience -- a fragmented art. Things that don't have anything to do one with the other, the juxtaposition of them is what makes sense, and we fill the gap between one scene and another one. That's the way it works -- film -- and that's the magic of it. Our brains, at the same time, we are living in the past all of the time thinking what we did yesterday. Or we are anticipating... our brains are anticipating machines that are all of the time thinking ahead about what time I have to leave, when I have this meeting. It's very hard to live in the present, so I don't think we have trouble jumping [in time]. I trust in the people when I am doing that. Normally we do it, so why shouldn't we do it [here]? Cinema is an infinite medium so we should take advantage of it, I think.

[modage]

i liked it.  while i havent seen it in a few years, amores perros is definitely still my favorite of the 3.  and though i havent seen it since the theatres i think i liked this about as much as 21 grams.  i recall coming out of that thinking i liked it but it wasnt something i wanted to watch again and i have the same feeling here.  but thinking about it 3 years later i think its probably time to watch that again so maybe the same thing will happen here.  anyway, each story could've been its own movie and the tokyo one feels the most disconnected from the other stories but is one of the more interesting.  surprisingly the pitt/blanchett storyline is the one for the bulk of the film i wanted to go back to the least.  and i'm pretty surprised pitt agreed to take the film because he isnt given a whole lot to do here, so i guess it was just to work with the director.  SPOILERS there was also a moment midway through the film where you can envision a very very bad ending for each of the stories and thankfully it doesnt happen.  there are a few sad touches/sacrifices, but most of the stories do not resolve themselves as grimly as i had imagined.  by the end though i was really engaged in the pitt/blanchett storyline and just kept thinking "please dont die, please dont die".  END SPOILERS so it was good, i'm glad the chronology was for the most part in tact as that was my biggest qualm about 21 grams, it made good sense here and i look forward to seeing what he does next outside of this 'trilogy'.

[samsong]

what a glorious disaster.  this proves a concept that i hate, and that is if a movie has a bad script, there's little to no hope.  i would've absolutely hated this film had it not been for the performances or inarritu's undeniable talent.  they bring to babel the few inspired, humane moments there are, desperately breathing life into arriaga's fashionably bleak outlook--without inarritu's sensibilities, i don't think it would be as wonderfully-but-unevenly elegiac as it is.  but that makes watching the film one really long act of giving the benefit of the doubt.  arriaga seems like he's trying to rewrite the old testament, new and improved with arbitrarily fractured narrative structure and ridiculous coincidences that somehow suggest human connection, where redemption is nothing but a device and spirituality is a hook in a (bad) pop song.  he and haggis have succeeded royally in failed brechtian didacticism and i hope to god that neither of them ever write another movie again, as unlikely and impossible as that is.  instead they get awards.  oh well.

[MacGuffin]

Inarritu wraps his trilogy with 'Babel'



Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu speaks reverently about an Argentine theatrical group whose suspended acrobats pluck audience members off the ground and into the air.

"Some people were so mad and so insulted that someone had crossed that line," the director recalls of the group, De La Guarda. "If you don't want to participate because you're too cool or don't want to deal with emotion, then you are becoming an old man and should surrender."

Similarly, Inarritu's gritty, visceral filmmaking has powerfully affected moviegoers since he burst onto the international cinema scene with his 2000 debut, "Amores Perros," leaving them wide-eyed and punished as they creep out of theaters.

"Art should create catharsis. If art doesn't move people, then art has failed," says the long-haired, intense Inarritu. "I want people to feel what I'm trying to say."

Inarritu's third and latest film, "Babel," concludes his trilogy, which also included 2003's "21 Grams." Though the films aren't directly related, each juggles fractured, tragic stories of intersecting lives brought together in the violence of a car crash, a heart transplant or a gun.

The film represents a pinnacle for Inarritu, 43, who has been hailed by New Yorker film critic David Denby as "one of the world's most gifted filmmakers." He is also part of a growing Mexican film invasion notable for both its talent and camaraderie though those bonds have recently begun to fray.

"Babel" is a four-pronged narrative that includes an American married couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) vacationing in Morocco when a stray bullet strikes; a Mexican nanny and her nephew (Adriana Barraza and Gael Garcia Bernal) who encounter difficulty crossing the U.S. border; a Moroccan goat-herding family forever altered by the purchase of a rifle; and a deaf and mute Japanese girl struggling with her disconnection to the world.

The separation of people by language, politics and misunderstanding is the larger theme of "Babel." The movie takes its name from the Tower of Babel, which the Bible describes as having been built by a united humanity to reach heaven. The tower angered God, who scattered mankind across the planet, doomed to forever speak different languages.

"My film is about those border lines that are within ourselves, which are the most dangerous," Inarritu explains.

Born the youngest of seven in the Mexico City middle class neighborhood of Narvarte, Inarritu who is called "El Negro" by his friends on account of his dark skin has made a lifelong pursuit of surpassing constraints.

At age 20, he became a disc jockey at a top Mexico City radio station, playing mainstream music like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. He became enormously popular in part because of the on-air characters he portrayed.

The popularity of his characters led him to a career making television commercials for Mexican TV. Though very successful, Inarritu says he was "getting my soul lost" in advertising.

He and screenwriter/novelist Guillermo Arriaga began planning a feature film of splintered narratives which would eventually be trimmed down for "Amores Perros," but remain the general concept for the entire trilogy.

"Amores Perros" catapulted much of the cast and crew to stardom. It was Bernal's first major film; he has since gone on to star in "The Motorcycle Diaries," "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and "Bad Education."

Arriaga wrote both "21 Grams" and "Babel," as well as Tommy Lee Jones' "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada." Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto has shot each of Inarritu's films (all mostly with realistic hand-held camera work) as well as Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," Spike Lee's "25th Hour" and Curtis Hanson's "8 Mile."

"Amores Perros," Prieto says, bound them together.

"What came of that movie is a bonus, but it was a very exciting time when we were making it," Prieto said by phone from Hong Kong, where he is shooting Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution." "It felt like we were doing something exhilarating."

The friendship between Inarritu and writer Arriaga, however, is over. Inarritu doesn't dispute recent reports that portray a feud between the collaborators over authorship of their films which reportedly culminated in Inarritu preventing Arriaga from attending the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

"I think we both are very sad and disappointed that a couple of newspapers tried to show the end of the relationship and not the nine-year relationship," says Inarritu, adding that they can now explore themselves artistically in new directions.

But the Mexican influx to Hollywood isn't limited to Inarritu collaborators. Directors Alfonso Cuaron ("Y Tu Mama Tambien," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban") and Guillermo Del Toro ("Hellboy," "Mimic") have also led the movement.

The three filmmakers have forged a well-known friendship and often screen early edits of their films for each other for advice. Cuaron and Del Toro also have films coming out this fall: "Children of Men" and "Pan's Labyrinth," respectively.

"There's nothing better than to share a common moment," says Del Toro, who first met Inarritu after Cuaron passed on an early edit of "Amores Perros." He called up Inarritu and told him flatly that his film was a masterpiece, but needed to be cut 20 minutes forging a friendship of candor and support.

"The three of us share a level of passion and a hatred for institutions," says Del Toro, laughing. "Though we defer on which institutions those are!"

Inarritu now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

"You become not from here, not from there. You become your own country in a way," he says of his new home. "I define myself from a vision, from a point of view of life."

The director is relieved to have completed "Babel," which he compares to having birthed a four-headed monster. The initial rough cut of the film had to be whittled down from 4 1/2 hours. The production took place across Mexico, California, Tokyo and Morocco and included many nonprofessional actors who spoke a number of languages.

The irony that those barriers of nationality and language could be crossed for "Babel" isn't lost on Inarritu. For him, the film's final shot where two characters silently comfort each other by that same power of physical touch is the symbol and hope of "Babel."

[polkablues]

If you hold a spoon up in front of this photograph for long enough, it'll start to bend.

[MacGuffin]

Babel Soundtrack To Resonate With World Music
Composer Gustavo Santaolalla scores Alejandro González Iñárritu's new film.

The soundtrack to Alejandro González Iñárritu's new film Babel will be released by Concord Records on November 21st, 2006.

The music from the film was composed by Argentinean musician Gustavo Santaolalla, who has worked with Iñárritu on his two previous films 21 Grams and Amores Perros.

To give the music for Babel an authentic Middle Eastern feel, Santaolalla taught himself to play the oud, an Arab lute with a distinct, percussive sound. His work for the soundtrack album includes solo oud meditations, folkloric recordings of the Gnawa brotherhoods of Morocco and orchestrated pieces that combine electronic percussion with the sounds of classical Arab music.

In addition to Santaolalla's music, the soundtrack also features Japanese musician, producer and DJ Shinichi Osawa and musician, producer Cornelius.

Furthermore Iñárritu worked closely with Santaolalla, Anibal Kerpel (Composer and Music Editor) and Lynn Fainchtein (Music Supervisor) to capture the traditional sounds of both Marrakech and Tijuana via the music Gnawa and other traditional Arab musicians in Morocco and various Norteño sounds from Mexico.

[pete]

does it feature sting (post 1998) and peter gabriel (post birth) as well?  WORLD music.

[MacGuffin]

Book Description
On the set with Iñárritu: The making of the final film in the Mexican director's acclaimed trilogy
Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu, along with top photographers Mary Ellen Mark, Patrick Bard, Graciela Iturbide, and Miguel Rio Branco, bring together their highly perceptive visions on cultural diversity in a book that combines seductive images and firsthand remarks on the unique experience of shooting Babel. Winner of the Best Director prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, the film is the third in the director's trilogy started by Amores Perros and 21 Grams.

Shot in Morocco, Tijuana, and Tokyo, and involving a multilingual cast lead by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael García Bernal, and Koji Yakusho, as well non-professional actors from the three countries portrayed, Babel continues the director's quest to explore the effects of loss and grief, and seeks to relate the modern implications of ancient myth on the origins of human inability to successfully communicate.

From the Publisher
This book is a visual recollection of the parallel stories and real-life characters that revolved around the making of Babel, and the unexpected ways in which fiction and reality collide. Photographs both from the set and the surrounding disparate landscapes are paired with the director's personal commentary on the larger-than-life film shoot. Introduced with essays by novelist and poet Eliseo Alberto and Gonzalez Iñárritu, as well as an interview with the director by Rodrigo García, the result is an engaging book that both complements Babel's powerful statement on the barrier of language, and reveals the fascinating reality of the people and places that inspired the film.

http://www.amazon.com/Babel-Alejandro-Gonzalez-Inarritu-Photo/dp/3822818143/sr=1-1/qid=1163464218/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-7339416-9181733?ie=UTF8&s=books

[Ultrahip]

This books pretty cool. I was checking it out at the Pompidou gift shop and got lost for about a half hour in some of the images, and Innaratu's commentary is involving enough.

[pete]

I just saw it.  it was good, and no serendipity!  but the ending felt a little bit weak, just because I dunno, the point seemed to have gotten lost amidst the resolutions.

[Gamblour.]

I'm going to begin writing this before I read any posts about it. SPOILERS

I think Innaritu has slowly expanded his cultural awareness across his career. With the purely Mexican Amores Perros, to the sorta bicultural 21 Grams, to this global film, he broadens his understanding of culture and how they build fences between each other. He's able to find the fences we build and show how they can be avoided through compassion. I feel he's a very compassionate person, as witnessed on the behind-the-scene stuff on the dvds, and it really comes through in his filmmaking.

It's interesting how he shows each culture: the Mexican marriage is very much about family and pure enjoyment, and even if you're not a part of that family or culture, you can enjoy it as well -- it's about unity and togetherness; the tour bus is very much not just white, but Eurocentric culture -- the culture of survival and independence and fending for one's self -- shown not just by the skin tone, but by the French, Australian, and American accents; the Moroccan culture and it's synthesis of these two ideas, as shown by their generosity to those in need, and their utter brutality towards their own people; and finally, the Japanese culture, which I'm the least informed about. A friend told me that their is a spreading of HIV and AIDS in that region, and that perhaps that influenced the portrayal of a girl with unbound sexual hunger.

What made this film work for me was the Mexican caretaker's story and the Japanese girl. I felt so much sadness for these two people, and what happened to the Amelia really fucking sucked. I started to hate the movie, because all the tragedy that happened to her was unfair, just because of one mistake. But then I guess it is also an indictment of the border patrol. Likewise the tragedy of the Moroccan family is so horrible, the film starts to dish out a bit too much.

The ending of the Japanese girl's story, and that last shot and the final musical score, was very beautiful.

I think what they've done with the idea of language barriers extending to cultural barriers and then extending to the barriers we choose to set up to prevent interference with other cultures is very intriguing, and this film is probably they're most insightful.

[JG]

the movie was pretty decent.  my initial response was that i really liked it, but its only because innaritu decided to end on the japanese story, which was the heart of the movie.  the ending hit me pretty hard. 

i really didn't like the brad pitt story at all, that had the most problems.  from the minute we sense the "tension" while they eat, you know there will be the obligatory reconcilation scene, but the writing just made it incredibly simple and dull.

in the very least, the movie succeeded in giving the Japanese girl's story a context.