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ENG 100

Critical Review

Xiaodian Xie

Review of Babel             

----The brightest light in the darkest night       

         “Babel” is one of the three movies from the trilogy directed by Mexico director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. (His trilogy is consist of “Amores perros”, “21 grams” and “Babel”) It is not a movie filled with depressing and desperate; on the opposite, it is a movie filled with love and understanding. It’s just like the words on the end of the movie: “To my children, the brightest light in the darkest night.”      

          First of all, let’s take a look of some negative sound. A critic from New Yorker whose name is David Denby said that: “he creates savagely beautiful and heartbreaking images; he gets fearless performances out of his actors; he edits with the sharpest razor in any computer in Hollywood; and he abuses his audience with a humorless fatalism and a piling up of calamities that borders on the ludicrous.”

        I don’t deny that this movie is a little heartbreaking and depressing. When I see the American lady Susan got shot in a strange place where she thinks it is full of dangerous; the girl in Japan is so eager to love but everyone treat her like a monster because she is deaf-and-dump; the Morocco boy killed by the police and his brother cries our loud and want to die for him and their dad; the Mexican lady walking in the desert desperately with two kids; honestly these made me really sad. Especially the Mexican lady, every time when I see this part, I can feel tears in my eye. So, how am I going to defend my stand? Well, I think this David Denby guy is so superficial that didn’t see the things deep down.

        Inside the harsh and sorrow, it’s all love; it’s all communication and understanding. The Beatles said that all we need is love, which I think that communication is also what we need.

        Did you remember the happy Mexican wedding? Did you remember the way they kill the chicken? Mexican kids think that’s fun, but the two American kids find it bloody and disgusting. That’s because two nationalities lack of communication. It’s true that nobody ought to tell them; but when these tow kids grow up, what will they think about Mexico? Did you remember when Amelia, his nephew and two kids crossing the border? Did you remember the face of the American inspector? In the movie, as a symbol of the law and the government, they treat Mexicans as thieves and bustards. It’s pretty ironic that what they did also do harm to the two American kids. Actually they are the real victims. Yes, lacking of communication, people from the same country or system will misunderstanding each other as well. It’s also very ironic that in the desert, Amelia takes really good care of the two kids; but when she asks for help from the police, she is arrested as a suspect for kidnapping these two kids.

        With communication, people not only can understand each other, but also can escape from loneliness and harshness; and find out what he or she really want.     

          Let’s take a look of the Japanese story; which I think it is the essence of the whole movie. A Japanese girl named Yakusho, who is deaf-and-dumb. Her mum died a few years ago, she wants to find a person who can really “listen” to her. Unfortunately, her dad can’t do this because he devotes himself too much to his work. So she tries to find if there is a boy would fall in love with her. However, she fails again because of her disability. Then, so desperate she is, to use her sexuality so as to seduce men she tries. At last, a virtuous policeman helps her to get rid of her loneness and teaches her what love truly is.       

        My narrative of this story is dump and baldness. However, what I want to show you are not really the story, it’s what Yakusho feels about her life. Nobody cares about her; nobody wants to “listen” to her. She is just a helpless girl who stuck in reverse and can’t get help from others. Her dad wants to care about her but he is too busy to do so. Yakusho has no one to communicate and no one to love. The seducing she did can be considered as a kind of reaction of her desperate. However, with the help by the policeman, Yakusho find out that she can somehow get true love from his dad, not to seduce every man she meets. In the end of the movie, when naked Yakusho and her dad hugging together, the camera also zoom out; I can see a little brightness in the dark Tokyo. That’s a little hope.     

         I didn’t mention the stories about Morocco and American, it’s because firstly, they are almost like one long story; second is that the whole movie is not in a linear way, it’s hard for me to narrate the whole plot here; thirdly, which is also the most important reason, they are telling the same thing deep down. Nowadays, extremely high technology makes people alone and separate. We can use e-mail, phone call and many other ways to get what we want. We don’t have time and mood to really communicate with each others. As a consequence, people will be lack of hospitality or friendliness. People use to speak only one language, but now we don’t. So we have to try much harder to communicate with others. But how can we try when we all alone in our own little territory?

It seems that these words can be fit in here: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”----Oscar Wilde. If we have love in our heart, it’s just like even though we are in the gutter, but we still seeing the stars. That will make people have something in common. Like the words in the end----“To my children, the brightest light in the darkest night.”

（这个相当于是英语写作的mid-term。我自己都不是很满意。希望有朋友能来指正罢。）