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#2708 -
Nondual
Highlights
In a
rare departure from the usual content, I've written a sort
of movie review, that ended up more like a story
of reflections for this issue. No spoilers, it's safe if you
haven't seen it yet.
This past
weekend, we finally got around to seeing
I am glad it was
nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, just so more people
might go to see it, not that the awards matter that
much. And because, weirdly enough, I read lots of reviews after
seeing the film, and felt many critics just didn't get the
greatness of it. For one thing, most people don't jump
up when it ends because they are obviously
quite moved, and often begin very animated
discussions on the way out. Shouldn't it matter if people
actually like the movie? My own sine qua non of a good
film is the way it stays with you and haunts you afterwards,
the way movies did when you were much younger. So
many others are forgettable, I'm asking what was the name of
that movie we just saw by the time I get home.
Reading all those
reviews was originally my substitute
for discussing the film, but I ended up reviewing the
reviewers. Some missed the obvious, not unlike the way Matt
Damon was criticized for being wooden and unemotional in The Good
Shepherd, which he was obviously meant to be to
fit his character. Many noted the similarities to
Crash, with characters unknown to one another eventually
impacting one another's lives. Critics of it love to mention this
"butterfly effect", how an apparently harmless
act may have such disastrous unforeseen
consequences elsewhere; but honestly the film was not made
simply to illustrate this relatively trivial point, it
is only one of many complexities driving the
plot. Also, in Babel, far more than hidden or even
obvious cultural prejudices are at work to divide people and
cause our infamous difficulty communicating. If
anything, we are already far too familiar with how different
cultures can divide us into warring camps. What is at the
root of this inability to understand and connect,
even with those we love in our own families? You begin
to notice then how all the real breakthroughs are intuitive, take
place almost in silence, and how that understanding can
cross language barriers as well. Some of the film's most
intimate moments happen wordlessly between
strangers. At times, the tension of what may befall
these people has an almost unbearable intensity. The
director manages to give a good sense of place, with scenes
in Mexico, Morocco, Japan, and the US that are peopled with
many non-actors being themselves. There is a sense of
ordinary life happening, that these could easily be real
events, and yet an overlay of intense
drama is created by the suspense, a fear
of impending doom.
Not that I hold
his good looks against Brad Pitt, but for once he is not prettier
than the girls in the movie. If anything, the lesser known (to
American audiences at least) actors have equally compelling
roles. The deaf/mute Japanese teenager is brilliantly done and
she deserves to walk away with all the acting
awards. Precisely because you have to receive
everything about her from her eyes and body language, it's
hard to miss the message being given about language there.
But once again, the director avoids triteness and
stereotypes, and creates a stunningly unique real person.
And the Mexican nanny is equally compelling, she makes
you care, so that you feel deeply about how it ends for
her.
Since I am writing
here, it begs the question no other critic even asks,
"Is it nondual?" Not that it matters, because
having any explicit message seldom makes for a better
movie. And so what if anyone is taken out of themselves,
even just for the duration of a movie, long enough to
identify and care about a character, it is still just
another experience. Maybe some people go away deeply
realizing how we are all one, and how, no matter our
outward differences, we are the same in our longing for
connection, for being understood. Honestly, it doesn't feel
like some uplifting message movie, it is more like that
infamous life review where your guts are turned inside out and
what you see isn't all that pretty, but it is
real. What we really are is enough to break your
heart. Can someone be profoundly changed by a film?
Possibly, but apparently it is also easy to miss many such
aspects of the film. Sure, the director does present
communication, with as many instances of
misunderstanding as true connection, and this contrast
forces you to see how, ultimately, it has nothing to do with
language. Perhaps my husband is right when he says communication
is basically an illusion.
In the original
Babel story, mankind has the ambition to build their own
"stairway to heaven". Whether the tower, still existing
near Baghdad, was destroyed by a god-sent earthquake
or collapsed under its own weight, it is used in the
Bible as an explanation for how a
once united mankind came to be scattered over
the earth, losing the ability to communicate with
one language. It can be a symbol for the
folly of spiritual ambition, or of a oneness destroyed by
distance and lack of understanding. We have
seen rather more recently the
many consequences of towers falling. The tower is more than
just a metaphor about language, and so is Babel the
film.