Alejandro González Iñárritu

by Jessica Hundley | Published September 22, 2006

Emerging from the vital wave of recent Mexican cinema, former radio DJ and TV producer Alejandro González Iñárritu has proven himself to be a moviemaker of unprecedented intensity. To experience his movies is to be torn open and shaken to the core, ripped apart and put back together again.

With 2000’s Amores Perros, Iñárritu not so much debuted as exploded onto the international scene, establishing himself immediately as a director to be reckoned with and as an actor’s dream. His follow-up, 21 Grams, featured a kind of holy trinity of contemporary acting talent: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Toro tearing through an emotionally taut narrative with all engines at full throttle.

His newest film, Babel, features superstars Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt alongside Amores Perros vet Gael García Bernal and a host of talented unknowns. The last film in what Iñárritu refers to as his “trilogy,” Babel echoes the momentum of its predecessors, as well as the others’ intertwined, “cause and effect” narrative structure—where one act sets off a chain of events that detonates a blast of gritty, high-speed high drama. Babel takes this formula to the nth degree, addressing issues such as class, immigration, terrorism and the misery of miscommunication, all with equal fever. As always, Iñárritu refuses to look away from the discomforting and finds his momentum in a continuous undercurrent of tension that propels his story toward its climax. The result is something akin to a cinematic tsunami. MovieMaker spoke with Iñárritu in an effort to find out what makes him tick.

Jessica Hundley (MM): This film is quite an intense emotional journey for the audience. I’m wondering, in your mind, what your intentions were—what you wanted them to take away from this experience.

Alejandro González Iñárritu (AGI): I didn’t target some specific thing. I think the target of every film that I do is to create a catharsis, an emotional movement. The response depends on the people who see it and which story and which theme or simple image will speak to them. But I don’t target a specific message or emotion. I feel like the sum of the emotions exposed in the film should create a kind of emotional earthquake in the viewer—to shake people’s minds and souls. If I can accomplish that, then I’m happy. I think that’s what art should try to accomplish; that’s its purpose.

Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait El Caid star in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel (2006).

MM: That’s interesting because I feel like we’re living in an age, particularly in America, where we’re bombarded with media to the point of becoming dulled. I think the result is a lot of apathy and a disconnection to our own emotions.

AGI: I find what you say is true. I feel like we deliberately make emotions banal. To feel today is to be weak. To feel today is to not be productive, or it’s construed as “corny” instead of “cool.” Then films end up making violence and humiliation very banal. And if the audience feels something, it tends to make them very uncomfortable, because they’re losing control. In the cinema they become unsettled. But people want to be touched. That’s why they go into the dark room called a cinema, because it allows them to feel and to cry and no one can see them. And we pay for that!

MM: In this film you’re exploring vastly different characters, each of which represents a very distinct human characteristic and emotion. I think almost anyone in the audience can find a piece of him or herself in at least one of the characters. How did these stories evolve? Did one character lead to the next?

AGI: I’m not very concrete in my concepts at the beginning; I’m very abstract. I’m not very pragmatic. I depart continuously from the concept and I can’t always explain where I’m going—but I know where it is. I think one of the things that triggered at least one of the stories was that I moved to the U.S. four days before September 11th. I think the self-exile and the immigrant-consciousness makes me feel more aware and more vulnerable. In the world we live in now, every six months I have to renew my Visa in Tijuana and endure the humiliation and the exposure you have to be put through in every airport in the world. And all this shit about “Are you with us or are you against us?”

I think that those topics, immigration connected with terrorism, are affecting millions of people from my country. Every year 1,000 Mexicans die in the desert. I felt I needed to do a film to talk about all that—about the idea of how one decision can be made and it can become a human tsunami and affect—20,000 miles away— another family who will never know where that wave came from. From there I thought about incorporating different countries and languages, and I also thought that it would be the right way to finish my trilogy. Amores Perros addresses local issues; 21 Grams addresses issues in a foreign perspective; Babel addresses issues on a global scale.

This film is different in that these characters never cross paths. They are completely disconnected physically, but they are completely connected emotionally—they are connected by pain. It is the only way we connect completely as humans. Happiness is different for everyone. Tolstoy said that “families are connected in happiness,” but I disagree. I think happiness is different for everyone. But what makes us miserable, what hurts us, is exactly the same for every human being.

MM: But what about love?

AGI: I think that pure love, the emotion, is the same. But I think what people love is very different. The inability to love—to give love or to feel love or to receive love—that is exactly the same for everyone. The things that make us miserable are the oxygen of life, the key elements that connect us. This film is also about compassion.

Rodrigo Prieto and Alejandro González Iñárritu collaborate on the set of Babel (2006).

In my experience of doing the film, I felt compassion for each character. It sounds corny, but I think we’ve lost that. We have so much criticism and very little compassion. We judge things according to politics, to the market, to the costs—never to the people, never with those human eyes, with compassion.

MM: Do you feel like each film has been easier to make as you progress in terms of production? You’ve gotten a lot of critical support. Are you finding that the process is easier from one film to the next?

AGI: Yes. I mean, if one film works at one level or another, it does help you. It helps you to not only find economical support, but also to find the people that you want to work with, in terms of actors. Fortunately I have been very lucky to have worked with people who really understand my work and we find a mutual interest. So I find it easier each time, yes.

MM: In terms of the casting process, you worked with Gael García Bernal again on this film, who was wonderful in Amores Perros. Tell me about casting this. Did you have him and the other actors in mind while you were writing the characters? I know you used many non-actors as well.

AGI: I went to Morocco and Tunisia and started casting the non-actors early on. Then I went to Japan and then I thought about Cate and Gael; those two were always in my mind. Then I thought about Brad. It was interesting, because he’s one of the most famous people in the world, and I wanted that challenge of making him become a human being in front of the audience. I wanted people to forget he was “Brad Pitt” and remember that he’s a good actor. I wanted them to see him as human—as a real person. I like the challenge and the risk that involves. The possibility of failing excites me and I try to anti-cast sometimes, to go against expectations.

MM: It’s an interesting choice for this character, because Brad Pitt is some people’s conception of the quintessential American male.

AGI: I agree, he’s an icon. There were a lot of actors who were obvious for that part, but that wouldn’t have been as fun or exciting. Instead you see this guy, whom everyone knows as this huge star, and little by little he’s stripped of that identity and becomes a man trying to save his wife. Just a man. That’s what this film is about—that we are all the same, no matter how rich or poor, no matter what religion, no matter if you’re Japanese or Mexican or American. We’re all connected by pain. What is life but to share pain and give love and ask questions about the things that happen around us?

MM: You’ve worked with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto on all your films. I’m interested in how involved he is with the process. Does he have input while you’re developing the story?

AGI: Our connection is almost telepathic. One of the biggest challenges of this film was to get rid of the text, get rid of the literal language, and just find a visual language that could make, from diversity and these four different stories, some connection. I wanted to shoot each story differently—in different formats and different styles—to make them diverse, but pieces of a whole. It was very risky and very challenging.

This film has very little dialogue. There are a lot of moments that are like silent film, so we had to find a way to connect and convey emotion. The Moroccan scenes are 16mm; the Mexico scenes are 35mm; we used different lenses for Japan. We didn’t know what would happen at the end, but ultimately, there’s an emotional tone to Rodrigo’s work. Just the way he operates the camera makes everything connect spiritually and lends the film its rhythm. So there’s always collaboration there at every stage. He is my right arm to tell these stories.

MM: All of your films are intrinsically linked in that they are about an event and action that spreads like a spider web to other people and places. With your next projects, are you thinking of going somewhere totally different—a narrative costume drama, maybe?

AGI: (laughs) I’ll do a chronological monologue inside an apartment—with one actor! I don’t know. I take two or three years for each film. I’d love to be more productive, but I need to spend time with myself. In the next months what I’d really like to do is nothing. I think that’s what I really need. I’m like an empty battery right now. MM

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