Babel

Last weekend, Baby and I went to watch what seemed like a promising show with 7 Academy Award nominations – Babel. Yeah, starring Brad Pitt – Baby’s idol. And true to its award nominations, the show was pretty good. The movie initially seemed like 4 unrelated stories being told in one movie, with a somewhat abrupt ending. However, at the end of it, it makes you think and reflect for awhile before you get the so-called ‘moral of the story’. It’s a cool movie and I highly recommend it. I give it 4 out of 5 popcorns! Here’s a sypnosis of it:

In the remote sands of the Moroccan desert, a rifle shot rings out - detonating a chain of events that will link an American tourist couple’s frantic struggle to survive, two Moroccan boys involved in an accidental crime, a nanny illegally crossing into Mexico with two American children and a Japanese teen rebel whose father is sought by the police in Tokyo. Separated by clashing cultures and sprawling distances, each of these four disparate groups of people are nevertheless hurtling towards a shared destiny of isolation and grief. In the course of just a few days, they will each face the dizzying sensation of becoming profoundly lost - lost in the desert, lost to the world, lost to themselves - as they are pushed to the farthest edges of confusion and fear, as well as to the very depths of connection and love.

Starting with a tragedy that strikes a married couple on vacation, Babel interweaves four stories that are set in 4 different countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Mexico, and Japan) and in 5 different languages. Im particularly amazed at how a seemingly isolated event can affect lives on the other side of the globe. It showed the inter-connectedness of the world and portrayed humanity’s mutual dependency.

Another thing that intrigued me was how they drew a link to the bible with regards to the Tower of Babel. According to the narrative in Genesis Chapter 11 of the Bible, the Tower of Babel was a tower built by a united humanity to reach the heavens. God, observing the unity of humanity in the construction, resolves to destroy the tower and confuse the previously uniform language of humanity, thereby preventing any such future efforts. An interpretive account of the story explains the tower's destruction in terms of humankind's deficiency in comparison to God: within a Judeo-Christian framework, humankind is considered to be an inherently flawed creation dependent on a perfect being for its existence, and thus the construction of the tower is a potentially hubristic act of defiance towards the God who created them. As a result, this story is sometimes used within a Judeo-Christian context to explain the existence of many different languages and races.

The story found in Genesis 11:1-9 is as follows:
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children builded. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel (confusion); because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Watch it! Be do beware of gross images e.g. girl stripping totally naked with saggy boobs and a weird looking bush, and forcing herself onto a handsome and very reluctant guy, old sweaty ppl making out passionately, bloody and grotesque sewing of a wound – just to name a few. Have fun watching!