Dir.
Alejandro González Iñárritu, US/Mexico,
2006, 143 mins
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, Gael Garcia Bernal
Review by Carol Allen
The multi-story movie
is now a sort of trademark of director Alejandro González Iñárritu
and writer Guillermo Arriaga and very good at it they are
too.
The scope and ambition of this project
is impressive. Made in several languages (Spanish, Berber,
Japanese, sign language and English) and four countries
(Morocco, US, Mexico and Japan), the structural relationship
of its four stories and they way they touch and affect
each other without the characters necessarily realising
it – a sort of casual causality – is
very complicated. It moves back and forth in time as it does,
but so very clearly that you are never unsure where and when
the action is. The different colour palettes used for the
countries with the urban wilderness of Tokyo contrasting
nicely with the more literal wildernesses, where the other
three stories are largely set, also adds to the clarity.
The film starts with two young Moroccan boys Ahmed (Said
Tarchani) and Yussef (Boubker Ait El Caid), playing with
a gun on the hillside, who accidentally and without realising
it shoot an American woman tourist travelling on a bus passing
down below. The woman Susan (Blanchett) and her husband Richard
(Pitt) are on holiday in an attempt to repair their crumbling
marriage. Meanwhile back in America their Mexican nanny Amelia
(Adrianna Barraza) is heading down Mexico way for her son's
wedding with their two children in tow, driven by her nephew
Santiago
(Gael Garcia Bernal).
As the situation escalates in Morocco with the American
government convinced this is a terrorist attack and the Moroccan
authorities embarking on the brutal investigation and interrogation
of possible suspects, Amelia and Santiago are experiencing
something similar from American immigration, as they attempt
to get back into the US after the wedding.
Meanwhile, in Tokyo a deaf and rebellious
high school student Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), desperate for
her father's affection, forms an attachment to the detective,
who she believes suspects her father of murdering her mother.
The only connection between her story and the others appears
to be the news coverage on the television in the background.
Until the twist, which demonstrates there are not only
a mere six degrees of separation between us all – sometimes
there is only one.
But the film is not just about how we are connected but
how we fail to connect and communicate and the misunderstandings
that arise. With the couple it's their failure to get through
to each other and then the fear and panic the husband experiences
as he tries to get help for his badly injured wife in a country
where no-one understands his language.
For Amelia it's the inability of the authorities to understand
her predicament, which drives her and her charges to get
lost in the
desert. And for Cheiko it's not only the physical communication
problem between the deaf and hearing worlds, but her emotional
non connection with her father.
These are all good stories in their
own right and very well acted. The well known names – Pitt, Blanchett and Garcia
Bernal – do what they have to do well as part of the
team without throwing anything out of balance, with the most
moving performances coming from Barazza as the nanny and
Kikuchi, who carries off some difficult and startlingly explicit
scenes with great skill.
The title leads us to believe that the film is primarily
on the Pinteresque theme of non communication, told through
failed and frustrating efforts to communicate rather than
silences and to some extent it is about some people's inability
to understand another's view and place in the world. But
what comes over equally strongly is the difference between
how the haves and have nots are treated in society.
The brutality of the Moroccan police and the immigration
officers towards those over whom they have power, the American
government's immediate assumption that the shooting must
be a terrorist act, and the way the normally privileged Richard
and Susan experience for once chilling indifference from
both their fellow travellers and the US authorities contrasts
well with caring humanity from the tour guide.
The film's complexity fully justifies its length and it
is totally engrossing.
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