So I watched Babel for the first time earlier today, and…well, I guess I liked it. (Very minor spoiler warning for what’s ahead.)
I mean, it’s a little over-wrought, if not over-long, but it’s very effective. But one thing that struck me was that, for a film that’s ostensibly about how we speak all these different languages and therefore fail to listen, and fail to communicate…there wasn’t a whole lot of that actually happening in the film. Which is to say that the problems the characters face, by and large, don’t arise over differences in language. The Americans don’t speak Arabic, for instance, but there’s a translator ready to help. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that language is almost a non-issue in the film and that, when characters do fail to communicate, it’s on a much more fundamental level. It seems to happen, more often than not, when they are speaking the same language.
This seems to be the case especially in the Japanese sections of the film. Which is maybe why I wanted more of Chieko ultimately (That, and the world of deaf-mute Japanese teenage girls is completely foreign to me and, therefore, more interesting.)
I wouldn’t go so far as to call the trailer for the film misleading, but it’s also maybe not completely accurate.