Babel ResponceBabel ResponceThis film explores different cultures and their reaction and involvement with the same crisis. The technique the director uses, moving around in time and place, envelopes the viewer in every situation simultaneously. This film is an eye opener to other cultures that we cannot see on tourist visits. We are brought in depth into what I believe to be very much actually like the cultures represented. We are shown different values from each sect of the crisis.
The Mexican woman cares for the children as her own as she works illegally in the United States. She is places in a compromising situation where she is to care for the children or attend her only sons wedding. She chose to bring the children into Mexico wither her to attend the wedding. Her decision is one I believe many people would have made. At the wedding we see parts of the Mexican culture that are odd and sometimes disgusting to us. However, it is important to make an effort to view the acts such as cutting a chickens head of in front of children as a part of their heritage and not as social taboo. When the series of events leading up to the Mexican nanny being stranded in the desert with the children unwind, the viewer begins to feel compassion for her. She made a decision to bring the children to a wedding and ended up losing everything because she was not an American citizen and was not allowed the chance to defend her choices. This film is all about the choices and consequences of the characters involved with the shooting.
The Japanese girls involvement with the scenario is mostly as an outsider. She is a teenage girl struggling with her sexuality, and if that is not enough for her, she is dealing with her inability to hear. She feels inhuman and unattractive to the opposite sex. She desperately wishes to be normal, as most teenage girls do. Her father is not around for her and her mother committed suicide when she was a child. Her problems are to great to put onto a teenage girl and have her deal with alone. We learn towards the end of her segment that her father had been under investigating for the mothers death which put even more strain of the relationship between the girl and her father. The develops a crush on a police detective trying to contact her father. When she eventually calls the detective to her house late at night she begins to act out in abnormal ways. The conclusion to her debacle is unclear having not seen the note she left with the
Ariel: “Yes, but it was you, and I said that you are not the only girl to see this.”