chakravyuha

One annoying thing about watching a movie in a group, is that burden of expectation on everyone to lay a verdict on the movie right after you walk out of the theater. This is especially true when the movie is not a pure entertainment piece. I am sure you can picture the scene. The end credits roll and the throngs start the silent shuffle out of the theater. The quiet is only punctuated here and there by an expressive few who might outright say that they loved or hated the movie. Most of them from among the younger lot. As soon as you are out, however, there’s a brief moment of uneasy silence. A silence where everyone expects the other to start passing judgment. Most movies – and I am talking about the ones that can easily be determined to be well made and have a story to tell – are easy to like or dislike, or even dismiss.

Babel, however is not one of those movies. Many of the reviewers and others who have watched it seem to have one major complaint with the movie. The problem, it seems, is the lack of a purpose. That seems to bother a lot of people and I have read and heard people ask “What was the point of the movie?”. Which to me brings up the question of why should we expect every movie to have a point, a moral or an implied conclusion? I am sure a gazillion pointless movies are churned out every year. Movies that neither end up neither entertaining, nor educating, nor even telling a compelling story, and people do not complain about them. Movies like Babel, however, can be seen to merit different treatment. A mainstream feature with a high profile director (Alejandro González Iñárritu) and an equally high profile star cast (Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael García Bernal are the major leads) naturally attracts more attention and is therefore reviewed more critically. If it’s a drama then it is also expected to have an ending that is a neat conclusion to whatever came before.

To me, a movie like Babel is a rare treat because it does one thing very well that not many movies do. It tells a compelling story. In this case not one, but three different stories. Consider this a three story version of Canterbury Tales, with Alejandro Iñárritu as the narrator of all the tales and with all the tales sharing a common subject, the many roles of the spoken word. The confusion sown by different languages in the world is the theme here. Hence the title Babel, referring to the Biblical Tower of Babel. The absence of language, the understanding, misunderstanding and lack of understanding resulting from the spoke word, all of these aspects underly these stories. The pleasure of the movie is in the stories themselves, not in trying to fish out a moral from it or looking for a satisfying conclusion. It’s beautifully made and acted and there are so many subtle observation and moments that make it a very rich movie-going experience.

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