Koji Yakusho and Rinko Kikuchi star in a modern day biblical tale of international misunderstanding.

Tsutomu Umezawa	Murray Close	Oscar-nominated movie director Alejandro González-Iñárritu was hoping to cast an actual deaf girl in his new film, “Babel,” starring Brad Pitt, but after Rinko Kikuchi auditioned, the filmmaker decided that she was perfect. “I was obsessed with hiring a real deaf-mute, but they are not easy to find. Then I read with Rinko, and I was actually disappointed that she wasn’t deaf, but I couldn’t get her out of my head,” González-Iñárritu said.
Rinko Kikuchi and Brad Pitt star in Alejandro González-Iñárritu’s “Babel,” the story of people in three continents whose intertwined lives are reveal themselves. The film received a standing ovation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

It probably didn’t hurt that Kikuchi had also dedicated nearly a year learning sign-language.

Thus, the 25-year old actress from Kanagawa landed the role of a rebellious deaf teenager starring with two of the world’s leading actors—international superstar Pitt and Japan’s Koji Yakusho (“Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Shall We Dance?”). 

Gabriela Saavedra Alejandro González-Iñárritu

Kikuchi, who has appeared in about dozen Japanese films, portrays Chieko. Yakusho plays her father, a man sought by the Tokyo police. Yakusho, 50, has been described as Japan’s Robert DeNiro and is a veteran of more than 50 motion pictures. Born Koji Hashimoto in Nagasaki, he studied at Mumeijyuku Acting Studio, where he was one of four selected out of 800 applicants. There he met actress Kawatsu Saeko, whom he married in 1982.  Yakusho’s breakthrough role came in 1983 when he starred in the year-long NHK drama, “Tokugawa Ieyasu.” He later appeared in the TV version of “Miyamoto Musashi” and starred in “Paradise Lost,” Japan’s second highest earning motion picture (“Princess Mononoke” was number one.)

“Babel” received a six-minute standing ovation when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Best Director and Jury awards for González-Iñárritu last May. The film was also nominated for the Palm d’Or (Best Picture). The Mexican director’s previous works include the international Spanish-language hit “Amores Perros” and “21 Grams” starring Sean Penn and Benecio del Toro.

The film takes its name from the biblical tale of humans trying to build a gigantic tower toward Heaven. Disgusted with their incessant quarreling, God causes each person to speak in a different language. “Babel” follows four sets of people in different countries who are connected by circumstance.

Pitt and Cate Blanchett portray an American couple vacationing in Morocco. They’re caught in a frantic struggle to survive after an accidental shooting. The film also stars Gael Garcia Bernal (“Motorcycle Diaries”) and eight-year-old Elle Fanning, younger sister of Dakota Fanning.

Shot over the course of a year across three continents—Morocco, Mexico, and Japan—“Babel” deals with what González-Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga believe is at the core of 21st century life: communication.

“The best part of shooting ‘Babel’ was that I began filming a picture about the differences between human beings … but along the way I began realizing that I was making a film about that which joins us—love and pain,” says the director. “What makes a Japanese and a Moroccan happy can be very different, but that which makes us miserable is the same for everybody.”

Indeed, in making a movie that crosses borders, cultures, conflicts and the internal lines people draw between themselves, González-Iñárritu, the cast and crew had to work through a similar tangle of widely varied dialects, lifestyles and personalities. On the set in Morocco, for example, people spoke Arabic, Berber, French, English, Italian and Spanish. “We even had actors from the same town who spoke different languages, so it was an ongoing challenge to bring everyone together,” he recalls.

One critic wrote that much of the film’s budget must have been spent on translators alone.

American audiences will have an opportunity to see if the international experiment results in a fulfilling cinematic experience when “Babel” is released by Paramount on Oct. 27.