Gael Garcia Bernal and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Talk 'Babel' - page 2

28-04-2007 10:46

Bernal: "There was a point in the film where the Mexican kids were playing tag with Nathan [Gamble] and Elle [Fanning] they were just kids, they were mingling together. As a child you don’t question differences. They’re the first ones to reinforce the fact that we are all the same."

Gael your character is quite ambiguous, how did you see him

Bernal: "Santiago is a kid that ends up being the catalyst of the tragedy that occurs in Tijuana. He provides the vehicle and he is the vehicle of this tragedy. On a very immediate level you can just say that his reaction to the border guard was a mistake fuelled by alcohol. But you can see it on a different level in that he’s reacting in a very primal way, he’s resentful of, as Alejandro calls it, the rite of humiliation that he has to go through every time he crosses the border. This resentment is another thing, maybe that’s where all these problems start."

What particular challenges did you face with this film, Alejandro

Inarritu: "There were several at different stages. I think the fact of pulling all these diverse elements together, to bring them into one single film was the most scary thought that I had when I made all the decisions. I was very aware of the danger of ending up with four short pieces, four films that would not be related to one another, that all these diverse elements would create something that would not be congruent. Obviously the challenge was how to pull together these pieces through the emotion within them, through themes more than plot and physical joints, which sometimes people don’t understand and criticise. But I think this is a film that you can’t approach intellectually and ask about the academic structure or plots - act one, act two, act three. So beyond the logistical, emotional, physical and intellectual challenges, the most difficult thing in the end is how in two hours you can make a translation in a universal language and find the grammar of the film that will speak to everybody."

Do you find the real shape of the film comes together in the editing of it

Inarritu: "Yeah, in the editing you discover some of those ideas, deciding to cut from here to here. For instance the chicken running intercut with the woman running, I said it was too obvious. Or the kids running in the desert and the kids running in the kitchen, things like that. Sometimes you want to play with that kind of thing. Sometimes it’s cheesy, sometimes it works, sometimes not, so I have another idea. But obviously with every frame a decision is made with a purpose, I don’t leave one frame without it being there for a reason. Every single one is a moral decision. Sometimes people get it sometimes they don’t, but that’s the magic of cinema."