'Babel' babble, or towering insight? BY ANDREW GREELEY

'Babel' babble, or towering insight? BY ANDREW GREELEY
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times
January 26, 2007

The film "Babel" is vehemently anti-American. Directed by the Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, it won the Golden Globe from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and a nomination for the Academy Award. American critics seemed to miss the subtle anti-gringoism of this brilliant ensemble movie, a kind of globalization version of last year's equally brilliant Academy Award-winner, ''Crash.''

Its overt theme, set in the title, is that language diversity (attributed in the Scripture story to the collapse of the tower of Babel) weakens and often destroys communion among different people. The underlying theme, however, is that gringos with their power and wealth are able to escape permanent harm from the confusion of tongues and cultures while poor natives must pay the price for it.

The American tourists ride into the Moroccan hills on a tour bus, behave as arrogant, affluent Americans, call their embassy for help and return home to their children. But Berber peasants either die or go to jail. A Mexican woman who has lived in America for 12 years goes home for her son's wedding -- a marvelously colorful and moving festival. Trying to return with the two children of a couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) who were on the bus in Morocco, the uncomprehending and insensitive American immigration officials treat her like the Gestapo would have treated a Jewish woman and ban her permanently from the United States.

One might argue against the film that not all American tourists are like the rich, oafish passengers on the bus (including the character played by Pitt). One might also say that not all immigration officials are like the self-righteous and unfeeling border guards in the film. Yet those of us who have traveled to other countries have experienced the supercilious and pushy ugly Americans, and we have read many stories in the media that depict the immigration officials almost cheerfully breaking up families.

The gringo image is not fair. It is an excuse for Mexicans, especially intellectual and artistic ones like Gonzalez Inarritu, to account for the failures of Mexican society and especially its endemic corruption. The point, however, is that there are enough Americans who do fit the image to rationalize the worldwide envy and hatred of the United States and to confirm the gringo stereotype.

Pitt's character in ''Babel'' is understandably furious that his wife has been shot (accidentally by a small boy with a gun), but acts out his pain and worry in an orgy of screaming frenzy, as if by shouting and pushing he can break the language barrier and obtain the response to which he as a rich and powerful American is entitled. It does not occur to him that any other style would be appropriate. Moreover, since he is Brad Pitt and his wounded wife is Cate Blanchett, most Americans will identify with them, even though the Berbers are sympathetic and try to be helpful. When push comes to shove, the director says to us, you are all gringos.

Americans are resented everywhere (not by everyone, however) because of their wealth and power. They are especially likely to be resented by the English and French, whose chestnuts the United States pulled out of the fire twice in the last 100 years (no good deed goes unpunished). The envy is their problem, but it is also our problem, especially now that our president, whom they think acts and walks like a ''cowboy'' -- and talks just like immigration officers in ''Babel'' -- is responsible for so much of the violence in the Middle East.

Americans have come to oppose the Iraq war because more than 3,000 Americans have died. We are much less concerned about the 34,000 Iraqis who have died. We didn't kill many of them directly. They kill one another, but if we had not occupied their country, they would not be dead.

Yet few Americans seem willing to assign personal responsibility to our leaders for this slaughter. We are, for the most part, indifferent to the Iraqi deaths. They have dark skin, believe in a strange religion and speak an obscure foreign language.

So maybe we're gringos after all.