Note: The title of the article was inspired by a comment by Douban netizens "self-healing".
The film I'm going to talk about today Chinese translated as "Babel Tower", but I still think it is more appropriate to translate it as "Tower of Babel".
The Tower of Babel is the story of Genesis chapter 11 of the Old Testament. According to the chapter, when human beings united to build towers that hoped to lead to heaven, in order to stop human plans, God made human beings speak different languages, so that human beings could not communicate with each other, so that the plan failed, and human beings have since scattered things.
The film is a non-linear narrative film with three stories in series, morocco and Mexico have a stronger story, while the Japanese part is more stream-of-consciousness and the camera language is more exciting.
Due to the scale problem, the story of the Japanese girl was cut a lot when it was released in China, which led many people to look confused and feel that the story was inexplicable.
In fact, after watching the full version, you can better understand the psychology of the characters, and many people (including me) like this story the most. This story is also the most thought-provoking thing about the whole movie.
Tower of Babel is a drama film directed by Alessandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and starring Brad Pitt, Kate Blanchett, and Rinko Kikuchi. The film was released in the United States on November 10, 2006, and in Chinese mainland on March 13, 2007.
Morocco
In Morocco, Abu, a shepherd, picked up a shotgun from a friend. He gave the gun to his two sons and drove the jackals away while herding the sheep.
The eldest son has no shooting talent, not even a master of human body drawing, but the younger son is extremely talented, almost a hundred shots.
When herding sheep, the eldest son wanted to test whether the range of the gun was really three kilometers, so he proposed to compete with the younger son to see who could hit the bus passing under the mountain.
After the two of them finished fighting, the bus still moved forward. Just when the two men thought the gun didn't have that long range at all, the bus suddenly stopped. The two were afraid of running into trouble and quickly fled back home.
At this moment, a female tourist in the bus was shot in the shoulder, bleeding profusely and in danger.
The female tourist, named Susan, came from the United States and came to Morocco with her husband to ease relations because of a marital crisis after the death of her third child.
The village they were passing through was very poor, and the nearest clinic was an hour and a half drive away, but Susan was already very weak. So Richard asked the passengers on the bus to wait for them here, and he and the tour guide took Susan to the village to call an ambulance.
Meanwhile, Richard also called the U.S. Embassy for support. But the U.S. Embassy escalated the whole thing to an international terrorist attack, believing that Moroccan ambulances were unsafe and sending helicopters to pick up Susan.
The Moroccan side was not happy and demanded that the US side first withdraw the terrorists' remarks before sending helicopters. The two governments have been deadlocked, and the media has also reported on the matter.
Rescue was delayed, Susan grew weaker, and when she thought she was dying, the couple untied the knot.
Because of the language barrier, Susan could not trust the villagers in this poor village. But in the end, it was the guide who hired the only veterinarian in the village to sew needles for her, and she barely managed to save her life. An old lady had been by her side to take care of her and give her smoking to ease her pain.
The passengers on the bus had been impatiently waiting, and they ignored Susan's injuries and left the Richards and the driver to drive the car away.
Abu's two sons were so frightened that they heard that a tourist had been killed by "terrorists" and secretly hid their guns on a small hill in the distance.
In order to dispel the terrorists' arguments, the Moroccan government quickly sent the police to the village to investigate the truth and arrest the murderer.
Seeing that things were getting worse and worse, the brothers could only confess to their father that they had killed people. Panicked and angry, Abu quickly found the gun and fled with them to escape the wind.
However, in the process of escaping, the police found them and shot them without saying a word.
Abu and his younger son hid behind a rock to hide from bullets, but the eldest son tried to continue to escape, only to be shot in the leg. The younger son saw that his brother was injured, and even took up a gun to fight back at the police, hitting a policeman. So the two sides began a shootout.
In the end, the eldest son was hit in the back and died on the spot, and the younger son chose to raise his hands and surrender.
After the killer was caught, american helicopters were allowed to rescue him, and Susan was saved, but had to be amputated. At this time, the media are praising both governments for ensuring the personal safety of citizens.
Mexico
Richard suddenly missed his son and daughter and dialed the phone outside the operating room. Listening to his son tell him about the funny things about the school, he couldn't help but cry.
His nanny had taken a leave of absence from him beforehand to return to Mexico for his son's wedding, but Richard ordered her to stay and take care of her children, saying that she would let her son get married on another day and pay for a better wedding for them.
The irrefutable nanny wanted to find someone to watch the children for her for a day, but couldn't find it. She decided to bring her two children to Mexico for the wedding together.
Because the children had soccer training the next day, after the crazy and lively wedding, the nanny asked the nephew to send her and the children back to the United States.
Across the border, U.S. police looked at a drunken nephew and two white children who were already asleep, suspected that they were traffickers, did not allow them to explain, and asked them to cooperate with the investigation.
As a result, the nephew who was drunk and afraid of the police actually forced the border with a foot on the gas. To protect himself, he threw the nanny and his two children in the desert, saying he would pick them up when he got rid of the police.
The next day, the nephew did not come to pick them up, the nanny and the two children were hungry and thirsty in the desert, and the girl was dehydrated and fainted.
The nanny placed the two children under the tree and ran to the main road for help. It just so happened that she met the police who had been searching for them, the children were saved, and the nanny was permanently deported for years of illegal detention in the United States.
Japan
On the other side, the police found that Abu's shotgun had been given to his guide by a Japanese named Kujiro when he came to visit. The Japanese police came to Kujiro's home for verification, and Kujiro's deaf daughter Chieko received them.
Chieko thought that the police had come to investigate her mother's death again, so she sent them away. Chieko's mother committed suicide a few years ago, and the police and the outside world feel that there is something wrong with it, so they often come to investigate their father, Kujiro.
Chieko is a very lonely, loveless girl, and she longs for someone to accept her as a deaf and mute person and treat her like an ordinary girl. Her father was usually busy and rarely accompanied her, and her friends only had a few girls who were also deaf and mute.
She meets the boy she likes in the bar, but the other party avoids and laughs at her because she is deaf and mute.
She took off her panties in retaliation, showed her legs to the men in the bar, and waited until they were excited and then walked away with contempt.
Once, a deaf friend took her to meet a healthy boy. This boy can do a little sign language, does not discriminate against her, and takes her to take drugs, play, and clubbing. Chieko immediately fell in love with him.
As a result, in the bar, she saw the boy kissing her girlfriend and left disheartened.
Desperate, she summoned the police officers who had come to investigate his father and told him the truth about his mother's suicide. After a while, she stripped naked and stood naked in front of the police.
She longed for the police to treat her like a normal woman and to be able to touch her, but the police refused. He hugged her, gave her a reliance, and accepted her grief.
Soon after, the police left. When my father returned home, he saw Chieko naked standing on the balcony. Chieko shook his hand and found hope to continue living, and the father and daughter embraced each other and wept.
impressions
The film consists of three stories that span countries, languages, races, and cultures, and although the connection between the Japanese story and the other two is somewhat far-fetched and the style is somewhat out of place, the film as a whole is still very fluid.
Like the title "Tower of Babel", these stories have both the most superficial language, the barriers caused by geography, and the gaps constructed by class differences, discriminatory prejudices, and political factors. The trust and understanding of people is hindered by barriers.
From the misunderstanding between father and daughter and husband and wife, to the differential treatment of American citizens and Moroccan grass people, the fear and prejudice of developed countries against third world countries, the discrimination and ridicule of the able-bodied people against the deaf and dumb, the disregard and distrust of the rich for the poor, the contradictions and conflicts between politics and individuals... A bullet gives us a glimpse of the tower of Babel in reality.
One of the reasons why the story of the Japanese girl is the most exciting is because his use of light, shadow and sound is more artistic, and the sense of confusion of this metropolis created is very flavorful. Another reason is that it is different from the other two stories, more like a sublimation of the theme.
It proves once again that language is not a key obstacle to communication and understanding between people, but more importantly, a high wall built between people due to complex human factors.
From the first two stories, the film seems pessimistic, because until the end the contradictions and misunderstandings still exist, and some even deepen.
But the story of the Japanese girl brings light to the film. It tells us that true understanding and the deepest empathy between people can not only break down artificial barriers, but also have the power to penetrate a person's natural barriers and embrace a lonely soul.