Gael Garcia Bernal and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Talk 'Babel'

28 April 2007

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Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu came to prominence with his award winning film Amores Perros in 2000. This also introduced his star Gael Garcia Bernal to an international audience. Since then the two men have enjoyed further success, Inarritu with 21 Grams, and Bernal with films such as Y Tu Mama Tambien, Bad Education and The Motorcycle Diaries.They are reunited in Babel, a film with seemingly unrelated human stories set in contrasting locations around the world. But slowly, as events unfold, the connection between them becomes apparent.

Do you see Babel as the culmination of a trilogy, after Amores Perros and 21 Grams

Inarritu: "I see this film as the last piece of a triptych that started with Amores Perros. I think together they are built as a body of work not only because of the content -parents and children unite them in some common subject matter - but formally too, they combine different stories. One story and one character is combined and defined by the others. So formally and substantially they belong to a family, yes."

How has your working relationship with Alejandro changed since Amores Perros

Bernal: "I think that the first experience we had was a whirlwind where I participated in only five weeks of a 13 week shoot. I had read the script, I knew more or less what the stories were about but obviously you don’t know the colour, or the context, you have no idea of the impact it was going to have. That process was very instinctive, it was very irrational in a way and incredibly organic I think. Now what I can see is that we’re a bit more aware of the craft and the things that are not important that we shouldn’t bother about. But at the same time we have the same instinctive energy, maybe the same stamina but with an added bonus in that maybe now we are more curious, because the more you do the more you realise you don’t know anything."Inarritu: "One thing I can tell you is that I felt the same that I felt doing Amores Perros which is I that Gael has a way to approach things that is very fresh, to not over rationalise or over intellectualise, and I believe in the power of innocence more than experience. Every time I’m challenged with a film I think that I haven’t learned anything, that every film is different and everything I have learned is useless in this new adventure. So I try to take out all that experience and approach it like it’s virgin territory which makes me very aware and very afraid of the situation. And that’s great."

How easy is it telling a story like this through the eyes of younger actors

Inarritu: "With the kids I try to be very simple, I try to help them trigger some image, you know. I always use ‘as if you are doing this’, trying to connect them with a very particular emotion of their life experience, if they can just bring 5% of that then they can apply it. Imagination is the key element with kids, to play that game with them. Some of them are really mature I think - scarily mature. Elle Fanning is more mature than me I think, that’s scary sometimes, they are like little adults. That’s the way I work, I try to clarify the actor’s objectives in the scene, their dramatic objective and what they want to achieve and how they can achieve it. And I try to clarify very simple things just to find the action that will drive them."

Did working with the Moroccan kids & American kids reinforce the feeling that we’re all the same under the skin

Inarritu: "Yeah, but I have to say there is a big difference. The Moroccan kids were very, very humble kids, especially Boubker [Ait El Caid], was of the street almost. They were really streetwise guys, theirs was like another approach in life. They’re not used to having managers, publicists, you know what I mean? The American kids were very polite and more educated and more used to being waited on - it was a huge difference. In the end they are kids, but I had to approach them very differently." 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."

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