Babel,

I saw the acclaimed movie Babel over the weekend. It was interesting. Note: for those of you to whom it is not already obvious, I'm going to talk about what I thought about the movie, which will spoil the plot for any who have not seen it. So, if that is you, and you don't want it ruined, stop reading now.

Okay, duty done.

Babel was about a lot of things- barriers between humankind, communication difficulties, the gap between the haves and have-nots of the world, prejudice, misunderstanding, various forms of injustice and dysfunction- but the thing that most hit me was the theme of loss, and how loss affects us as human beings. All the major characters in the movie experienced loss: the Japanese family lost their mother, the Moroccan family lost both sons (one to the policeman's bullet and one, presumably, to jail) and probably also lost a significant amount of their livelihood along with the sons. The American family lost their infant son, sending shock waves through the entire family; and they almost lost mom too. Amelia did not lose anyone to death (well maybe she lost baby Sam too, in a way), but she lost her entire life in America upon her deportation, and with that, two children whom she loved as if they were her own.

The unfairness of the loss struck me as well. The American baby died of SIDS- nobody's fault and nothing that could be prevented or even explained. The Japanese mother committed suicide, her own action; but in regards to its impact on her family, they did nothing to deserve it or bring it on. We are not told why she shot herself, are only left to see the sorrow of her husband and the out-of-control behavior of her teenage daughter, and assume that the suicide took them by surprise. I think I feel worst for Amelia, as nothing that happened on that day that resulted in her deporatation was actually her fault. The person most to blame for those events is probably her nephew, Santiago, but we don't ever find out what happens to him. In all these situations, these people are just trying to navigate life as best they can, and tragic things happen, leaving them with devastating loss which did not result from their own choices or volition.

Then there's the Moroccan family. An impoverished rural herdsman buys a rifle to give his teenage goat-herder sons so they can shoot the jackals that constantly threaten their livelihood, their goats. A totally normal scenario. But in a moment of childlike foolishness the younger son shoots the rifle at a distant vehicle, thinking there is no way he could ever hit it, but he does hit it and seriously injures an American tourist, which sets off a chain of events that ultimately leads to the death of his brother and his own arrest by the police. One could perhaps argue that the father was foolish putting a firearm in the hands of young boys without adequate training and guidance for its use. The younger son's actions clearly demonstrate he lacked the maturity to handle such responsibility. And they undoubtedly made their own fates worse by running from the police rather than cooperating. But nothing they did justifies the police opening fire on an old man and two boys in the desert. And such, the consequences they had to bear for their actions rather outweighed the actions themselves.

of all the characters I could identify most with Chieko, the teenage girl in Japan: with her deep, painful loss coupled with persistent experiences of rejection and feelings of isolation. (NOT, I might add, with her flashing teenage boys and naked propositioning of police inspectors!) Not to mention what could be seen as a betrayal by her best friend. For the sake of attention from a boy.

Loss seems to do funny things to the human mind and emotions. It can make you feel as if you're looking at the world around you through a telescope, miles and miles removed from the world itself. Many of Chieko's scenes convey this feeling well, this feeling of isolation and alienation. At other times as I watched her acting more and more out of control I couldn't help thinking "That chick is crazy!" But then I started to wonder if her behavior only seemed crazy to me because I would not choose to act that way. It was obvious as the film went on that her "crazy" behavior was driven by her intense pain, feelings of rejection and anger over what had happened in her life. All of which I have experienced in abundance in the last year. I would never lure a policeman I had just met into my apartment, strip naked and try to get him to have sex with me. Myself, I would more likely choose to yell profusely at the person(s) who hurt me, and/or to distance myself from them; which seems to me like a more "normal" response than seducing strangers, but might not seem so to others who would respond in different ways. Or, perhaps, to the one being yelled at.

In another movie about a Japanese woman who experiences loss, the film Memoirs of a Geisha, the narrator tells us at one point:

"At the temple, there is a poem called 'Loss' carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss.....only feel it."

I think this is very true. To detail loss never seems to do it justice. Words on a page seem insignificant, hollow, too small, empty in comparison to the actual thing. you can do your best to describe the feeling- come up with flowery phrases about a part of yourself being gone, the emptiness of the ache that is left behind, the crushing weight on your heart that never goes away, the sense of looking at the world from far away and through blurry lenses, but in the end the sum of the parts doesn't add up to the whole. The words of the poem "Loss" have been lost and any reader is left in the void of the nothingness and not-knowing-ness of loss itself.....

I don't know which is worse- loss that could have been avoided, or loss that could not have been avoided. What would be worse- knowing that you could have exercise control over events and you didn't, or knowing you had no control at all? Living with the regret of not taking action to prevent loss, or living with the knowledge of your inability to control anything? Perhaps the worst thing is not knowing which category loss falls into in a given situation. Could I have done something to prevent this, or not? If I had done X, would it have made a difference, or would my actions have been futile? Could I have known to decide differently, or was that impossible?

Sometimes I think one of the worst things in life is not knowing........

So, that is my current train of thought about Babel. Of course there is much else I could say about it, but this is what I'm thinking at the moment.

In the interest of not leaving you completely depressed, I include the following bible verse for your consideration:

"Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again. From the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. You will increase my honor and comfort me once again." Psalm 71: 20, 21