One Other Of The Lead Characters example essay topic

Show in detail how one film demonstrates innovation of technique and originality of theme The over riding theme in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarrito's movie Babel is the idea that we are all connected, as if we live in one large village. The techniques he employs to show this are highly innovative. Babel has an unconventional narrative which follows three different stories. These stories occur in various different parts of the world - Tokyo, Morocco, and the US / Mexican border.

These places couldn't really be more different - Tokyo is the epitome of modernity and the hub of advances in technology, Morocco is a barren, desolate, desert country in North Africa, and the border between the US and Mexico is really the only place in the world where the rich Western countries come face to face with the poverty stricken Third World. Tensions here are high, and this is shown with great success in Babel. At first sight, it is hard to understand why these three stories occur in the same movie - they can't possibly have anything to do with each other. Wrong. These three stories are inextricably linked by events that occur before the movie is filmed.

But these events aren't bought to light till late in the movie. The narrative isn't just unconventional, but it's also non linear. This is shown simply by time. It went from being daylight on the US border to daylight in Tokyo to daylight in Morocco before repeating the sequence. This basically means that the events unfolding before us couldn't have been simultaneous because the time difference between the US and Japan should have made it the middle of the night in one place when the other was basking in the midday sun.

But this did not happen. The multiple narratives being shown don't conform exactly to Todorov's narrative theory of equilibrium - disruption - equilibrium. The movie doesn't appear to show any of these equilibrium, but focuses fully on the disruptions. These disruptions, even though they are from completely different stories, have many similarities. One of the similarities is understanding, or the lack of understanding when it comes to other forms of language. In Morocco, we see Brad Pitt's character struggling to understand the Moroccans, the border police at the US / Mexican border have problems communicating with Santiago, and notably the difficulty that Cheiko, the deaf girl, and the other characters have with understanding each other in Tokyo.

Language also leads to prejudice in these stories. A guy approaches Cheiko with the intention of asking her out, but as spoon as he realises she is deaf, he walks away. Similarly, the British and American tourists in Morocco want to leave Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett behind and flee the Moroccan village, believing that all the locals are terrorists. In spite of the prejudices, there aren't really any villainous characters. They are all victims of circumstances that are out of they " re control, like Cate Blanchett gets shot by a kid playing with a rifle, the deaf girl can't make herself hear people, and Aunt Amelia was basically forced to take the kids to Mexico because of Pitt and Blanchett getting stuck in Morocco. And because there are no villains, there are not any heroes.

This is one of the very few movies that does not comply to Propp's narrative theory based on all characters being comparable to characters in a fairy tale. Another narrative theorist was Levi - Strauss. His work on binary opposites is identifiably in Babel. Some examples would be the tension between Arab speaking countries and English speaking countries. This is shown in Morocco, when the coach leaves without Pitt and Blanchett because of their fear of the locals. This stems from their belief that all terrorist attacks are the result of Arabic / Islamic extremism, and they believe this incident was an act of terrorism.

But this is just a case of misrepresentation. Representation is an important part of all media forms. The average Englishman will never go to more than six other countries, therefore their opinions on people from all the other countries in the world will be based purely on what they see in the media. So if the media only show Arabic men in association with terrorist attacks, people get led to believe that Arabs are terrorists. But this is not the case, and Babel shows this to the audience. What the English and Americans in the movie think is a terrorist attack was children playing with a rifle, and then the villagers gather round to try to help Blanchett, but the tourists think they have something more sinister planned.

A similar thing happens on the US / Mexican border. As Santiago and Amelia cross over into Mexico, Santiago says to the kids something along the lines of "Mexico is dangerous because it's full of Mexicans". Obviously he didn't mean this; he was mocking the American representation of his country. Deep down, irrespective of media representation, all people are the same. This is shown in Babel through the use of family relationships. All the lead characters are related to at least one other of the lead characters.

Pitt and Blanchett are married and their children are in the care of Amelia, whose nephew is Santiago. The rifle used to shoot Blanchett was owned by the father of Cheiko, and the unintentional assassin was playing with his brother, and then flees, aided by their father. These families are all very important, they link each storyline together. But more importantly, they serve as fuel to develop the characters.

No matter what happens to them, their primary concern is their family. Everyone has family, and caring for them is the primary concern for almost everyone, so this makes these seemingly completely different people exactly the same as us, which relates back to the overriding theme of this film - we are all connected. We might not all be connected through genetics or circumstances, but we are all connected in the sense that we all feel the same things, experience the same pains. This is what Babel was trying to show.