“I'm deaf, not blind”

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Art - Photography and Film, grade: 16/20, University of Exeter, language: English, abstract: Alejandro González Iñárritu’s kaleidoscopic 'Babel' puts an end to a twist of fates trilogy that previously began with 'Amores perros/Love’s' a Bitch and '21 grammos/21 Grams'. Like these, it plays with time to recount stories linked by a terrible incident , i.e, here the unintentional shooting of an American traveller by two Moroccan children. Its title obviously refers to the Genesis episode occurring in the city of Babel: Noah and his sons want to erect a tower to reach the skies but they soon get punished by God who creates different languages dividing human beings. As language is the fundamental source of any interchange, one may conclude from the title that the first topic Babel sets out is related to communication. This essay aims to display how the film deals with this latter theme with reference to, first, the narrative structure and, finally, some audacious film techniques. Since this paper is limited, we will only discuss this issue from a broad perspective.