Babel (2006 Film) Essay Questions

How do the Moroccan police trace the rifle back to Yussef?

As the police check the scene of the shooting, they are able to locate several bullet casings. Nearby, they find fresh goat droppings. They know that only someone coming from a rural area would be around goats, and therefore transfer the droppings, or have goats with them. This means that someone local had to be the shooter. By going to the village and asking questions, they are soon able to ascertain that the rifle belongs to Ibrahim. At first they believe he is the shooter, and beat him up as they question him, but it soon becomes apparent that he is not lying to them, that he sold the gun to his goatherd neighbor, which leads them to Abdullah's home.

This is an ensemble movie, in which all of the characters having equal importance. However, which character would you consider to be the catalyst for the unfolding events of the film?

The catalyst for the events that unfold is Yasujiro Wataya. He gave his tour guide, Hassan, a rifle as a thank-you gift after his hunting trip to Morocco. If he had not done so, his guide, Ibrahim, would not have had a gun to sell to Abdullah. Abdullah could not have given his sons the rifle to protect the herd of goats. They could not have taken potshots at random, and would not have hit the tourist bus, injuring Susan Jones and creating an international incident. The Joneses would not have been delayed in Morocco and would have gone home to California on time, which would have made it so that Amelia did not take the children to Mexico and eventually get deported. In this way, we see that if a Japanese man had not given a gun to a Moroccan tour guide, a Mexican woman would not have been deported and an American woman would not have been wounded. This is the main premise of the film: the interconnected nature of events in a globalized world, and it is Yasujiro whose gift is the catalyst for this.

What effect does presenting the scenes out of sequence have?

By presenting the scenes out of sequence, the film allows the weight of each story to become clear at different times, and the interconnectedness of the stories to be revealed in unexpected and dramatically satisfying ways. It also serves to demonstrate the theme of the movie, which is that a chain of events that can start on one side of the world can end up having a huge effect on events on the other. By jumping from one country to another, and one time-frame to another, we see that action A causes effects B, C, D, etc. This would not quite pack the same dramatic punch if the scenes were shown in order, calmly and consecutively.

How do Susan and Richard heal?

When we meet them, Susan and Richard have drifted apart after the sudden and unexpected death of their infant child. We learn that Richard withdrew after the death, unable to show up to his wife emotionally, and it is even implied that he may have had an affair. After Susan gets shot, Richard must take care of her in Morocco, and she finds herself completely helpless, on the brink of death. As she tells him to take care of their children should she die there, they begin to process the loss of their baby honestly for the first time.

Did Amelia make a mistake?

Amelia certainly makes several mistakes when it comes to deciding what to do for her son's wedding. However, because we are aligned with her in her journey, we can see the ways her mistakes are connected to necessity and her desire to do the right thing in difficult circumstances. After Richard is unable to secure someone to take over watching Debbie and Mike for her, Amelia has no choice but to take them with her to her son's wedding. The viewer is meant to empathize with this choice, to understand that Amelia would naturally want to attend her son's wedding, and her decision is vindicated when we see what a good time Debbie and Mike have at the event. Then, her decision to bring them back that night is motivated by her desire to make sure they attend their soccer practice the next morning. Her lapse in judgment comes in allowing her drunken nephew, Santiago, to be the one to drive them across the border. Santiago fights with the border agents and only makes the situation worse. However, the film also shows the ways that the border agents are brutish and disrespectful towards Amelia and Santiago, unwilling to hear their story and exhibiting a clear racially-motivated animosity towards them. While Amelia has some lapses in judgment, she is also put in a difficult position by other people in her life, which makes her deportation that much more tragic.