BABEL: BRILLIANT FILM, CRAP POSTER

Alejandro González Inarritú’s finale to his trilogy of portmonteau films; two featuring the undeniably charming Gael García Bernal, left me visibly shaken. In fact, it stunned my friend, Fowad, and me into silence as we stumbled out of the rapidly emptying Screen at Islington green amidst a crowd of eerily hushed, wide-eyed cinegoers.
For a heavily subtitled film that speaks multiple languages; silent, visual or otherwise, it never, for a moment, babbled into disharmonious tangents or lost my interest.
The fatality of difference, with reference to the linguistic delirium of the ‘babel effect’ features as the central theme and, unlike Crash, Babel handles the subject matter with a sensitive and universal color palette. Morocco, Mexico and Japan form the three points of entry into the global triadic city and a gunshot fired into the mountains the focus of the narrative.



The film’s title and theme spurred an enquiry into the Babel school of painters; Breugel, Holbein, Hendrick van Cleeve etc., who lent the Babel motif its currency, and their depictions of the formidable tower of Babel, leading me to think that, perhaps, the film’s poster, was lacking in its role as translator of the visual text it was attempting to portray. How does a series of ad hoc images held together by a shaky tower of type serve as an interpretation of the film’s theme or its visual language? Could not the designers have drawn reference from the rich imagery surrounding the biblical theme?



Especially, since the primary reason the tower of Babel was a pervasive motif at the time was because painting was considered the universal language that would translate Latin text to a polylingual Europe, much like the visual translation graphic design, i.e. a poster, attempts to do.
An excursion into any artistic discipline that emphasizes the ‘eye’ over the ‘ear’ is incomplete without sage McLuhan’s input. Yes, this is why I lose friends every time I start talking about design or film or tv or media…..
To further indulge, I shall add a comment by McLuhan, who always has something entirely arbitrary to say about everything. McLuhan was particularly interested in acoustic space, language, culture and sound. With reference to tape, (such an archaic thought) he expounded…

The body is no longer the ultimate parameter, and voice becomes a point of departure rather than the point of arrival.

In Babel, language barrier aside, humanity, shall we say, found a universal voice: in pain, loss and grief and in the fear of death. Alejandro Gonzalez inarritu weaves a powerful narrative that entangles the viewer within its rich tapestry of folk tales; ordinary people rocked by the consequences of childish foibles, a crippling desire to live, experience love, to belong and gripped by the debilitating inhumanity of politically inspired bureaucratic red tape. Such a shame the poster was crap.
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Additionally, for all who wonder how and what I ‘lapsed’ into, in the early months of last year I decided to wave design goodbye and pursue a career in moving images (no, not animation). In spite of the many occasions, particularly of late, that I question my decision, at the time investing days and energy into generating, funding, building the perfect visuals to accompany a narrative was the most true, most humane, most meaningful thing to do.
So where am I now? In London, acting out the role of an unemployed film buff who pulls out a sketchbook at random and has currently developed a Polaroid fetish. Three guesses what further posts will feature…