I’d seen the movie Babel around a week ago here in Warsaw. I liked the movie … but it was more fun watching it here ! So first I’d talk about the experience and then the movie.
All Hollywood movies are played with polish subtitles in Warsaw (of course .. why wouldn’t they ?). But that was a slight problem for the only English speaking audience. 10 minutes in the movie, I was looking at my friend like we’d just spent 16 zlotys on lessons in a language whose name also we didn’t know ! 20 minutes into the movie … the lessons had turned multi ethnic and multi lingual ! 30 minutes into the movie .. it was a freakin’ global village in front of us and we were missing Arthur Dent to squeeze a Babel fish into our ear ! Halfway through the movie, we’d given up on one of our senses and were focusing only on visual contemplation.
Around 70-80 % of the movie happens to be either in Moroccan or Mexican or Japanese (I think). Only the rest in English. Now if I’d watch it back in India it would obviously not be a problem coz I’d have English subtitles. Here it was another story.
But the funny thing was … actually more surprising than being funny … that we still understood the whole movie ! And we didn’t just understand it … we loved it ! Call it great direction or acting or both … but even without understanding what’s being said, you could easily feel what the characters were going through !
Ofcourse there was still one point in the movie when we got extremely frustrated when a mute girl is using sign language … and there were still Polish subtitles !!! I mean c’mon !!!
Now to the movie. The message was very clear … but my interpretation was a little different. No matter who you are, whichever part of the world you may belong to, whichever culture or language … you are human. You feel like any other human. You struggle like any other human. And it was brought out beautifully in the movie. The best part I liked was the music and the photography. The background score, especially the guitar was simply touching.
My favorite scene in the movie is towards the end when they show the helicopter flying into the village from below … and the music … it’s like angles gliding down.
Anywayz, thanks to the movie we have another word of ‘mananamanana’ (a bit cryptic) or for situations when you meet someone / some people and you don’t understand the language … Babel ! :)
1 comment:
Well, so you liked the movie. It was a good movie actually. while reading your experience though, i recalled one of mine. recently having discovered that my Mallu date had bought me tickets to a mallu 'masterpiece' he thought i'd liked, i felt like a cornered mouse. as opposed to your experience of pure glee and satisfaction, i experienced - nausea, extreme boredom (bordering on the temptation of suicide), a wish of euthanasia (believe me killing me at that time would have been merciful) and an acutely aggravating headache.
I however told myself... what you tell everyone as the title of your second post.
Nice to read ur blog after such a long time.
Post a Comment