Babel and Alternate Structure

I'm a sucker for alternate storytelling structures. If I continue wanting to write popular fiction, this may well prove my downfall... but I do love books and movies that use unconventional devices to tell a story.

Maybe I just like to be challenged a little while I'm reading/watching something? Maybe I need an extra something to keep my attention these days? Not all the time. I also enjoy a simply-but-well-told story. But some of my all time favorite books and movies have had some kind of alternative structure. (And alternate structures--particularly fractured timelines combined with heavy use of flashbacks--seem to have overtaken the TV writing these past couple of years. So far, I'm likin' it. Studio 60 had a reversed timeline last week...)

One of my favorite movie structures is interconnecting stories. (I've been working on a book like this, but it's in very early stages and I'm not sure how well it's working.) While struggling with that book I've been thinking movies have a bit of an advantage for this structure, because it's easier to show the reader which story they're in using visuals--such as the actors themselves, the setting etc. It's harder, in a book, to flip between stories when the reader is still getting all the characters straight. Not impossible... Just harder to suck a reader into a book that flips around a lot and still not bog down the pace with too much description and/or narrative.

But other alternate structures can work in popular fiction... I blogged a while ago about Journal of Mortifying Moments, by Robyn Harding which used a journal as a literary device. And Deidre Knight's Parallel series books use time travel to allow the reader to replay events in the book and/or see events out of order. Other books released as literary fiction but which crossed over to mainstream that used alternate structures by way of multiple or disjointed timelines include Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. LOVE both of these books.

But I was going to talk about interconnecting story movies. There are plenty like this in the "art house" genre. (Robert Altman is a god. (Nashville, Gosford Park, Short Cuts) Paul Thomas Anderson has done some great ones, (notably Magnolia) and Babel filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, (21 Grams, Amores Perros, Babel) is a master at this style as well.) Plus, he's cute. (Blogger wouldn't let me upload his photo. Maybe he's too hot?)

In addition to these less commercial films, a few movies using this structure have crossed into the mainstream. LOVE ACTUALLY comes to mind. In fact, I might argue that many episodes of Seinfeld used this structure. That is, seemingly unconnected story lines for each of the main characters end up connecting in an unexpected way. Love that kind of thing.

But back to BABEL.

I don't know if BABEL has opened everywhere yet, but it opened here in Toronto last weekend and I saw it in September at the film festival. I liked it enough that I may go again now it's been released. It is a long and challenging movie and the stories aren't as intricately connected as this filmmaker's earlier films... (like 21 Grams) but I was really impressed none the less. I found it a totally engrossing film.

And what a great theme for our times: Miscommunication.

Miscommunication because of language differences.
Miscommunication because of emotional baggage.
Miscommunication because of deafness (which I guess is just a special case of language differences)
Miscommunication because of cultural bias
Miscommunication because of prejudice.
Miscommunication because of politics.
Miscommunication because of fear.

If you haven't seen it, go. Brad Pitt actually made me cry. Something I really didn't think he, as an actor, could do. And the strange thing about my crying is, the way the story unfolds, it's not like the audience is finding out new information at the point he made me cry. (It was during the scene in this photo.) We'd see one side of this conversation early on in the film, so by the time we see this scene, we know what's going on, and still, as much as I've fallen out of love with Brad Pitt of late, it was hard not to admire how he evoked strong emotions in this scene. For me, anyway. Now I really want to see the film again.

And speaking of celebrity marriages... (Okay, Brad made me think of them.) Britney and K-Fed? Those two crazy kids.... Who saw that divorce coming? Shocker.