MUMBAI: The Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett film Babel, which premiered at the Cannes Film festival in France this year and won three awards there including one for the director will be simultaneously release in India along with the US in the mid-week of July.
E-City films, which has distributed critically acclaimed films in the past like Million Dollar Baby and A History of Violence will release the film.Babel is the final chapter in the trilogy after the much-acclaimed Amores Perros and 21 Grams for Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. The movie recently became a hot topic of discussion when imdb.com mentioned Shilpa Shetty and Mahima Chaudhry’s name in the film’s cast, even though they weren’t working on the movie.
The title of the movie refers to the tower of Babel in the ancient town of Babylon, where humans thought they were gods and could reach the heaven without God. The film explores the subject of relationships and plays around the themes of love in adversity. It revolves around four interweaving stories set in Morocco, Tunisia, Mexico and Japan.
At the press conference for the film at the Cannes Film Festival last month Iñárritu dwelt on the film’s title saying, “Babel, we think about man building this tower and trying to arrive to the sky and be gods. And then God got angry and he created these different languages. And that’s the reason we are talking so many languages all over the world. For me that’s not the problem, I think that language can be very easy to break.
“For me, I think the problem is the ideas and preconceptions that we have that really keep us apart. That’s what the film’s about. And at the same time, I want this film to be basically about what separates us and what brings us together. I think that’s the key element: What makes us the same people living in the world and not what are our differences. Which ones are the similarities and I hope this film communicates that.”
As far as the film’s message is concerned he says, “I don’t know if it’s an x-ray of the world because that’s too ambitious, but I tried to show what is going on with us at the moment. We see the “other” as always abstract, so that to be different means to be dangerous and not able to understand the other. This is happening not only country between country, but against fathers, against sons, against husband.
“We are not able to listen anymore. I want to talk about that, the borders within our souls: our preconceptions of our fathers, the archetypes we have from religions, races, cultures. I tried to make a film that talks about prejudice without being prejudice.
“Seeing a film is very a fragmented emotional experience. At this time, I didn’t want to play with that. I wanted to be more linear so that people wouldn’t feel distracted by the film’s structure and just let them flow with the emotion of the film.”
Blanchett said, “This film is all about connections between parents and children, which I think so many of us understand. It felt very personal for me as well as for Alejandro. Being a parent, when you see a child in danger, particularly with an irresponsible nanny, it engages me, it’s like pulling the roots of my system out. It’s very distressing.”
About the experience of working with Brad Pitt the Australian Oscar winner said, “It is like chocolate. He’s glorious and wonderful. We have been wanting to work with one another for a long time and to work together in quite an unexpected way and for Brad to be doing something for an audience, and Alejandro, it was intensely riveting.
“The moment of him, which is so beautifully judged in terms of where it’s placed in the film but also so exquisitely performed, when he speaks with the children on the phone at the end, I think it’s one of the most moving moments in a film.”
As far as America is concerned Iñárritu says, “In this film I don’t want good or bad guys. I think what is happening in the world is perpetuated. I try to be subtle in a way, to not be archetypal, and not prejudice. When I think about an Empire, it’s not about nations, human beings, others. It’s the way they normally try to pretend that everyone is a terrorist, anything can be held against you. I think there is now an obsessive idea, obsessive problem with the United States, showing its power. This is a very stressful moment in history.”
