Babel.

"Tragedy strikes a married couple on vacation in the Moroccan desert, touching off an interlocking story involving four different families." (IMDb) Read more on Alejandro González Iñárritu's language-based drama.

Babel won an Oscar for "Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score" due to the work of Gustavo Santaolalla. It supposedly utilizes its score superbly in each and every scene to set the mood for the audience. Even then, the score is so beautifully integrated that you barely realize as you lean to the edge of your seat or feel a chill run down your spine as emotional piano plays in the background.

Although some may say that the score of a movie is critical to its success and ratings, I cannot hear the music. However, there are scarce captions that indicate whether there is emotional piano playing, or heavy club music. It is impossible for me to distinguish the mood of one scene from another. And this leads to an interesting point shown in this film: language and music. Music, worldwide, uses language to convey emotions and ideas. Being a deaf-mute, it is impossible to receive these emotions. The brilliantly composed score is a key benefactor in the success of the film in general.

After some research, I came to relate with one of the characters depicted in the film. Upon googling her character bio, this is what I found:

"Chieko Wataya (綿谷 千恵子 ) is a rebellious, deaf Japanese teenage girl, traumatized by the recent suicide of her mother. She is bitter towards her father, Yasujiro Wataya (綿谷 ヤスジロウ ) and boys her age, and is

sexually frustrated." (Google)

It seems to me like Chieko is trying to cope with the social defects of not having a common language. As she is coming of age, her friends tease her about being a virgin. Naturally, she is ushered into awkward attempts at communicating, which leads to more and more sexual tension. She becomes depressed and frustrated in her situation, and makes various attempts to force her body onto others. Her scenes create a strong bond between language and intimacy. They also show how isolating it can be when you and others do not share a common language. This is the reason I can resonate with her character.

However much the sexual attempts attract the viewer to her character, it is the subtle muted scenes that are scattered throughout the movie that really take the cake. The most prevalent of these scenes, takes place in a electro-music club, which she attends after doing drugs with a shady group of men. All the partygoers are having the time of their lives, , raving and dancing. And for a brief moment, we are immersed in the feeling of the club. UNtil the camera cuts to Chieko and the audio goes silent. You can do nothing but feel the vibrations of the heavy bass over intense scenes of partying. This illustrates what it is like to be deaf, unable to hear and therfore communicate with those around you. Chieko is confused until she sees that her friend has abandoned her for another man. It is scenes like this that really draw attention to language itself, and the importance of a common form of communication.

(Since I am deaf, I had an email-conversation with Alejandro González Iñárritu to try to get a better perspective on the reasoning behind the score of some scenes, and the silence of others.)

Eve Westbrook: Not being able to hear the score of the film has a considerable effect on the language and emotion that is meant to be conveyed, Is there anything you can say to that?

Alejandro Iñárritu: Yes, it is apparent that the score we composed for the film was meant to provoke feeling and emotion in many scenes, and not being able to identify those emotions through a common language does have a substantial effect on the movie. However so, this idea of music and social language was explored in Chieko's scenes.

Speaking of that, What meaning did Chieko's scenes add to the film? How does the reasoning behind them contrast to say, the muted scene in the desert?

Well, the scenes are meant to show what it would have really felt like to not be able to hear language, and feel its effect. And that is supposed to take full effect in the drastic change between a noisy club to a dead silence. Although subtle, those scenes were meant to provoke thought into "living without language." In the desert scene, as the caretaker attempts to call out to the lost children, there is also an audio cut. That however, is meant to contribute to the scene itself, a vast, barren desert, all alone and lost.

(These were really the only two questions that I had concerning the muted scenes in the movie. I thank Alejandro for his patience and cooperation on the subject.)

Without touching on any major plot points in the film itself, this film is nothing short of a masterpiece. The way that the movie fluidly plays out on screen was a pleasure to watch, and I can only imagine it would be better to the viewer that can hear the beauty of language in the film.

- Eve

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