Sur les lieux du tournage avec Inarritu : la réalisation de ‘Babel’. Le cinéaste mexicain Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu et les grands photographes qui l’accompagnent, Mary Ellen Mark, Patrick Bard, Graciela Iturbide et Miguel Rio Branco, mettent en commun leurs visions infiniment sensibles de la diversité culturelle dans un livre qui associe images passionnantes et commentaires de première main du réalisateur sur l’expérience unique du tournage de ‘Babel’. Prix de la meilleure mise en scène au 59e Festival de Cannes 2006, ‘Babel’ est le troisième volet de la trilogie du metteur en scène, dont les premiers sont ‘Amours chiennes’ et ‘21 grammes’. Le présent ouvrage est un recueil visuel des histoires parallèles et des personnages de la vie réelle qui ont jalonné le tournage du film. Tourné au Maroc, au Mexique et au Japon, Babel a bénéficié d’une distribution incluant notamment Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal et Koji Yakusho, ainsi que des acteurs non professionnels de ces trois pays.
Préfacé par l’écrivain Eliseo Alberta et accompagné d’une interview d’Inarritu par le cinéaste Rodrigo Garcia, le résultat est un livre qui vient compléter le puissant message de ‘Babel’ sur les barrières culturelles et émotionnelles que tout être humain construit en lui-même, tout en révélant la fascinante réalité des hommes et des lieux qui ont inspiré le film ; photographies en n.b. et en couleurs.
Shot in Morocco, Tijuana, and Tokyo, and involving a multilingual cast lead by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael García Bernal, and Koji Yakusho, as well non-professional actors from the three countries portrayed, Babel continues the director’s quest to explore the effects of loss and grief, and seeks to relate the modern implications of ancient myth on the origins of human inability to successfully communicate.
This book is a visual recollection of the parallel stories and real-life characters that revolved around the making of Babel, and the unexpected ways in which fiction and reality collide. Photographs both from the set and the surrounding disparate landscapes are paired with the director’s personal commentary on the larger-than-life film shoot. Introduced with essays by novelist and poet Eliseo Alberto and Gonzalez Iñárritu, as well as an interview with the director by Rodrigo García, the result is an engaging book that both complements Babel’s powerful statement on the barrier of language, and reveals the fascinating reality of the people and places that inspired the film.
The director: Born in Mexico City in 1963, Alejandro González Iñárritu studied filmmaking and theater and composed music for Mexican features before directing and producing his debut feature film, Amores Perros (2000), which was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film and received over 53 awards from all over the world, including BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Edinburgh, San Sebastian, and Toronto. Iñárritu’s follow-up film, 21 Grams (2003), which he directed, co-wrote, and produced, starred Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, and Naomi Watts. Both Del Toro and Watts received Oscar nominations for their roles in the film and Penn won the Jury Prize for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. Babel, which will be released worldwide in November 2006, garnered the Best Director Prize at the 59th Cannes Film Festival. Iñárritu lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. Text in English, French, German, and Spanish
