Categories: films
Date: 10 February 2009 23:24:56
So, mildly encouraged by the comments to my previous post by Jack the Lass and Ian, I shall try to continue to ignore the pesky box things in true stiff-upper-lip style and bash on regardless (or until someone can work out what I should do).
On Sunday evening after church, Mrs Tiggywinkle decided it was time to tackle the ironing mountain. To help her in her task she had already borrowed Babel from the library.
This turned out not be a great choice from an ironing point of view as Mrs T had not realised that at least half of the film was enacted in foreign languages. It's not that she is put off a film by people speaking in languages other than her own - far from it -but it does make it a little difficult to do both the chosen tasks at the same time. The ironing was slowed down considerably by having to stop to read the subtitles on the film for the Arabic, Japanese, Spanish and sign language interpretations.
As for the film itself, it reminded me enormously of Fatih Akin's "Auf der anderen Seite" which I reviewed in these pages back in November. I'm not sure which film came first - I guess Babel may have done. The two are concerned with the theme of our lives being inextricably linked with other people's. Everyone's decisions, good or bad, impinge directly on others' lives. And seemingly insignificant decisions or actions can have enormous implications when linked with other people's decisions and actions, be these witting or unwitting.It's quite sobering to think of how many things one may have done which may have affected other people's lives negatively.
Was it a good film? Yes, I would say so - although it did not depict the Westerner in a good light when confronted with a bit of gritty reality in a less developed country. Whereas Auf der anderen Seite showed that our lives are so closely linked as to be just a step or two away from each other, Babel showed that the actions of a person who lives thousands of miles away can indirectly be part of an event which occurs to a complete stranger on another continent.