How do you sign WTF in Japanese?
June 28, 2007 11:58 PM Subscribe
Please give me your interpretation of the Japan storyline in Babel...
...mostly from the point that she meets the cop(?). It was beautiful but entirely mystifying. I suppose it should go without saying, but here be spoilers.
...mostly from the point that she meets the cop(?). It was beautiful but entirely mystifying. I suppose it should go without saying, but here be spoilers.
she is a girl who is having issues: her mother died mysteriously, she's deaf, she has a distant relationship with her dad, has not many real friends, and feels rejected by boys because she's deaf. she feels lonely and isolated. so she finds these older guys that she can create this sort of forced intimacy with and still feel safe (the dentist, the cop, the boy she flashes..) at the end she realizes that what she really needs is a healthy relationship with her dad, and it's suggested that that is what starts to happen at the end.
right?
posted by amethysts at 4:10 AM on June 29, 2007
right?
posted by amethysts at 4:10 AM on June 29, 2007
Yeah pretty much. The girl had daddy issues. There's some question that her Dad isn't that great -- his wife killed herself and he's off running around the Middle East, shooting stuff and giving away rifles -- but mostly there's a sense that until she learns to connect with her Dad she can't really connect with anybody else. And so she's a lonely, angry virgin and there's a big hole in her life that just can't be filled by friends, drugs, or boys. It's a bit flawed I think because the Japanese family is the only really dysfunctional family and also the trigger and so it comes across as a bit heavy handed and the movie victimizes women a bit too much general. I kind of get the sense that it's really the wife's suicide that lies at the center of the movie, it being a kind of 'original sin' but that's debatable.
posted by nixerman at 4:50 AM on June 29, 2007
posted by nixerman at 4:50 AM on June 29, 2007
My 2ยข...
The girl found her mother shot in the head. She made up the balcony story to lure the detective there. Basically, she was traumatized and probably going through PTS from witnessing her mother's suicide. Being deaf, she already felt disconnected from the world, but the situation most likely pushed her over the edge. She was lost but had an overwhelming need for someone to give her attention. She clearly felt invisible so she reached out in unhealthy and desperate ways... to the dentist, the detective, by flashing & hanging out with those boys... basically cries for help. The detective could see this, and eventually her father acknowledged it and was able to embrace her -- good thing as he was the main person she truly needed it from. Up until then he just hadn't been able to do it because he was overwhelmed by the situation he was in himself. In the beginning of the movie, they were lost and struggling separately. In the end they seemed to turn the corner and begin to struggle together and find support in eachother. By embracing his naked daughter, it's like her father finally recognized her pained existence and committed to help her find her way and be her father -- which is what she needed.
posted by miss lynnster at 4:53 AM on June 29, 2007
The girl found her mother shot in the head. She made up the balcony story to lure the detective there. Basically, she was traumatized and probably going through PTS from witnessing her mother's suicide. Being deaf, she already felt disconnected from the world, but the situation most likely pushed her over the edge. She was lost but had an overwhelming need for someone to give her attention. She clearly felt invisible so she reached out in unhealthy and desperate ways... to the dentist, the detective, by flashing & hanging out with those boys... basically cries for help. The detective could see this, and eventually her father acknowledged it and was able to embrace her -- good thing as he was the main person she truly needed it from. Up until then he just hadn't been able to do it because he was overwhelmed by the situation he was in himself. In the beginning of the movie, they were lost and struggling separately. In the end they seemed to turn the corner and begin to struggle together and find support in eachother. By embracing his naked daughter, it's like her father finally recognized her pained existence and committed to help her find her way and be her father -- which is what she needed.
posted by miss lynnster at 4:53 AM on June 29, 2007
i came away from it thinking that she had killed her mother and that her father, out of guilt and to protect her, was pretending it was a suicide.
posted by thinkingwoman at 5:49 AM on June 29, 2007
posted by thinkingwoman at 5:49 AM on June 29, 2007
I considered that at first too, thinkingwoman. Since I have never read any confirmations of that theory anywhere I just figured maybe I was totally wrong.
posted by miss lynnster at 6:30 AM on June 29, 2007
posted by miss lynnster at 6:30 AM on June 29, 2007
I think the first few comments here have it. Why would you think she killer her mother? There is no real indication of that in the film.
posted by chunking express at 6:48 AM on June 29, 2007
posted by chunking express at 6:48 AM on June 29, 2007
Cheiko is screaming for attention, the only ways she knows how. She sees what works with ease for her hearing friends. But it's not the same ease for her. She is invisible and untouchable. She struggles to understand the death of her mother, who removed herself from the equation in such a way that furthers her feelings of insignificance. Cheiko twists the truth, weaving herself into the suicide story (saying that she SAW her fall, instead of being able to say that she HEARD the gunshot), thereby proving her existence meaningful and allowing her to be "a part" of the suicide. Her father repeatedly struggles to clear the truth about his wife, which inadvertently undermines Cheiko's pain and struggle to connect with people - including her dead mother.
The rest I think everybody else pretty much nailed upthread. I just thought it was important to point out the reason WHY she changed the suicide story in the way she did.
posted by iamkimiam at 7:57 AM on June 29, 2007 [1 favorite]
The rest I think everybody else pretty much nailed upthread. I just thought it was important to point out the reason WHY she changed the suicide story in the way she did.
posted by iamkimiam at 7:57 AM on June 29, 2007 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: I just thought it was important to point out the reason WHY she changed the suicide story in the way she did.
Um... do you sign? Because I have no idea how you picked up on this detail.
I got that her mother died, obviously... Is this why the cops were hanging around? That was a part I hadn't understood.
posted by regicide is good for you at 8:47 AM on June 29, 2007
Um... do you sign? Because I have no idea how you picked up on this detail.
I got that her mother died, obviously... Is this why the cops were hanging around? That was a part I hadn't understood.
posted by regicide is good for you at 8:47 AM on June 29, 2007
The cops are hanging around because the fathers gun was used in Morocco. She assumes they are there about her mother, because the father was questioned about her death before.
posted by chunking express at 9:03 AM on June 29, 2007
posted by chunking express at 9:03 AM on June 29, 2007
I got the same thing out of it that most of the other posters did, and it really is a beautiful and haunting story.
I didn't sense, though, that she was desperate for attention as much as intimacy -- which is a little different. Someone to pay attention, yes, but also someone she could feel close to and secure with.
I thought that this was actually the most powerful story in the movie, maybe because, while it didn't fit very well with the rest of the intertwined stories, it was thematically perfect.
My interpretation of the film was that it's about how all humans have very basic needs, simple and complex, and those needs seem so difficult to communicate regardless of language barriers; physical barriers (deafness, borders); cultural barriers, political barriers -- but that when it comes down to it, because we all share so much humanity, at the end of the day, you may not get exactly what you thought you wanted, and things may even turn out badly, but you will get what you need. People understand eachother at a basic level, through shared humanity. Amidst all that, though, was the point that shared humanity is not always enough to completely overcome everything else. Sometimes things have to get really fucked up before anybody sees what's really going on.
I don't think I would have gotten that from the film if the Japanese family's storyline was cut out.
posted by pazazygeek at 1:50 PM on June 29, 2007 [1 favorite]
I didn't sense, though, that she was desperate for attention as much as intimacy -- which is a little different. Someone to pay attention, yes, but also someone she could feel close to and secure with.
I thought that this was actually the most powerful story in the movie, maybe because, while it didn't fit very well with the rest of the intertwined stories, it was thematically perfect.
My interpretation of the film was that it's about how all humans have very basic needs, simple and complex, and those needs seem so difficult to communicate regardless of language barriers; physical barriers (deafness, borders); cultural barriers, political barriers -- but that when it comes down to it, because we all share so much humanity, at the end of the day, you may not get exactly what you thought you wanted, and things may even turn out badly, but you will get what you need. People understand eachother at a basic level, through shared humanity. Amidst all that, though, was the point that shared humanity is not always enough to completely overcome everything else. Sometimes things have to get really fucked up before anybody sees what's really going on.
I don't think I would have gotten that from the film if the Japanese family's storyline was cut out.
posted by pazazygeek at 1:50 PM on June 29, 2007 [1 favorite]
« Older Graphic design and/or photoshop question | Economist filter: How exactly does the fed set... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
You do have to register with IMDB to read the thread, I think. But IMDB is worth it.
posted by The Deej at 12:37 AM on June 29, 2007