  "I didn't want to make a film about politics or politicians. I hate them. I want (to examine) politics on a human scale," says director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (seen here on the Moroccan set of Babel with one of the film's stars, Brad Pitt).
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Famed Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu believes his new film Babel is the future of cinema.
Not because he is an egomaniac but because his Babel is part of a new breed. He means it both in the way it was made and in what it has to say about the world.
"The nature of the way this film happened, and what is talked about in this film, is the future of the cinema," Inarritu tells the Toronto Sun. "I think it is true that this is a global film that speaks about different things globally."
Babel is officially an American release but, in reality, is a true Mexican production, according to the writer-director. The eight key production departments are headed by Mexicans, many of them veterans of Inarritu's earlier and highly acclaimed films, Amores Perros (2000) and 21 Grams (2003).
Yet the global qualities of Babel are obvious. It plays in English, Spanish, Japanese, French, Berber and Arabic.
It was shot in Morocco, Japan and two regions of Mexico: Sonora and the northern part of Baja California.
It is an omnibus film built of four stories, three of them primary, that interconnect only loosely.
And it features an international cast ranging from Hollywood stars to a sexy Japanese fashionista to a couple of children Inarritu plucked off the streets in Morocco, boys who had never seen a movie much less been in one.
For star power, Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett play an American couple thrust into a crisis by a stray bullet during a vacation outing in Morocco. They find themselves stranded, and desperate, in a rustic rural village. The only medical help is a vet who had been tending to a goat.
Another story concerns the couple's Mexican nanny and her adventures with the children back in Los Angeles and across the border in Tijuana. As played by the superb Mexican character actress and acting teacher Adriana Barraza -- who was the mother in Amores Perros -- the character is both heroic and tragic as she gets caught up in America's racist border policies.
The other primary story is set in Japan, where a distraught father, played by veteran Koji Yakusho, struggles to deal with the challenges faced by his deaf-mute daughter, played by the striking model-turned-actress Rinko Kikuchi. He is incidentally connected to the shooting in Morocco through an old hunting gun.
In every story, there are problems in communication, some of them caused by borders, cultures, politics, misplaced romantic urges and levels of maturity.
"Lack of communication is not a language problem," says Inarritu. "It is a point-of-view problem and, beyond anything else, it is about those borders that are not physical. They are those borders which I suspect are really within ourselves and which are the most dangerous ones, I think."
Humans, says Inarritu, work in primal tribal groups, however those tribes might be defined.
And the tribes set borders, many of them rooted in intolerance.
"These borders are taught to us by our fathers, by our parents, by our teachers and by our governments, which build the sense that our religion, our nation and our race is the best one."
"The way to survive in this world is to just honour the differences. If we don't recognize that the differences is the other are really great, then we are really at the end of the world."
Pitt buys into the psychology of the film.
At his press conference during the Toronto filmfest, he said that Babel is not about America and its self-interests.
"It's the bigger issue of misunderstanding -- paranoia, protectionism -- which the film portrays." Inarritu, according to Pitt, explores a key issue: "What is in us as humans that leads us down this path? So I think it speaks beyond America on these issues. That's what drew me to this film."
Not surprisingly, though, Inarritu takes a swipe at the U.S. government for its border policies with neighbour Mexico. Even though he now lives in the U.S., Inarritu is critical of "the stupidity of the United States government" in dealing with borders, real or imagined."
Referring to the divisive policies of U.S. President George W. Bush, Inarritu says: "He is exactly doing what my film is about. That is what is implicit in the film, my social and political comments.
"But I want to say and make very clear that my film is not about that. My film is trying to tell, one more time, four intimate stories about parents and children. That's it. I didn't want to make a film about politics or politicians. I hate them. I want (to examine) politics on a human scale."
BABEL
Starring Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, Adriana Barraza, Gael Garcia Bernel, Rinko Kikuchi, Elle Fanning
Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Opens friday
Rating N/A
A tragic indicident involving an American couple in Morocco sparks a chain of events for four families in different countries throughout the world.
paramountvantage.com/babel/
