Stars: Koji Yakusho, Brad Pitt, Gael Garcia Bernal, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza, Rinko Kikuchi

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Summary: An epic tale of human alienation, BABEL draws several disparate yet interconnected storylines that converge in surprising and cataclysmic ways. An accident sparks a chain of events that have global repercussions.

BABEL is the crowning achievement in the trilogy from the unstoppable creative pairing of screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, which also includes AMORES PERROS and 21 GRAMS. High up in the Moroccan mountains, two young boys--the sons of a local herdsman--are randomly test-firing a rifle their father has entrusted them with. As they take aim at a vehicle in the distance, they are blissfully unaware of the chain of events they will set into motion as one of the brothers pulls the trigger. Moments earlier, Richard and Susan (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett)--a wealthy couple from San Diego--are seen travelling across the desert when their coach is shot at and Susan is badly injured. Distraught and panic-stricken, Richard calls home to inform their Mexican maid Amelia (Adriana Barraza) of the situation and to ask her to look after their two children. However, this couldn’t have come at a worse time for Amelia, who is expected at her son’s wedding in Mexico that same day. Torn between her responsibilities to her employers and her familial obligations, she decides to attend the wedding with Richard and Susan’s children in tow. But disaster strikes when she is stopped at the border control, suspected of smuggling illegal immigrants into America. Meanwhile, the shooting in Morocco has escalated into an international incident, with the media crying terrorism. Half way around the world in Tokyo, another story is unfolding, this time involving the original owner of the rifle (Koji Yakusho) and his rebellious deaf daughter (Rinko Kikuchi). Building upon its predecessors’ method of weaving together disparate storylines, BABEL reaches new heights of ambition with a tale that, in the absence of traditional narrative and protagonist, relies on numerous incredible performances to evoke an affecting relevance by framing contemporary issues in very human struggles and mistakes. The result is an intimate, emotional experience that would approach melodrama were it not rendered so realistically. Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto’s colour palette masterfully captures the muted tones of the harsh natural landscapes of Morocco and the Mexican border, as well as the fluorescent lights of Tokyo that denote another, equally barren, end of the spectrum. The misunderstandings born of cultural, language, and class barriers are on par with those that occur between family members, depicting a world that, while connected in the least expected of ways, is also faced with a deep-seated crisis that threatens to alienate humanity from itself.

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Brilliantly conceived, superbly directed, and beautifully acted, Babel is inarguably one of the best films of 2006. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu and his co-writer, Guillermo Arriaga (the two also collaborated on Amores Perros and 21 Grams) weave together the disparate strands of their story into a finely hewn fabric by focusing on what appear to be several equally incongruent characters: an American (Brad Pitt) touring Morocco with his wife (Cate Blanchett) become the focus of an international incident also involving a hardscrabble Moroccan farmer (Mustapha Rachidi) struggling to keep his two young sons in line and his family together. A San Diego nanny (Adriana Barraza), her employers absent, makes the disastrous decision to take their kids with her to a wedding in Mexico. And a deaf-mute Japanese teen (the extraordinary Rinko Kikuchi) deals with a relationship with her father (Koji Yakusho) and the world in general that's been upended by the death of her mother. It is perhaps not surprising, or particularly original, that a gun is the device that ties these people together. Yet Babel isn't merely about violence and its tragic consequences. It's about communication, and especially the lack of it--both intercultural, raising issues like terrorism and immigration, and intracultural, as basic as husbands talking to their wives and parents understanding their children. Iñárritu's command of his medium, sound and visual alike, is extraordinary; the camera work is by turns kinetic and restrained, the music always well matched to the scenes, the editing deft but not confusing, and the film (which clocks in at a lengthy 143 minutes) is filled with indelible moments. Many of those moments are also pretty stark and grim, and no will claim that all of this leads to a "happy" ending, but there is a sense of reconciliation, perhaps even resolution. "If You Want to be Understood... Listen," goes the tagline. And if you want a movie that will leave you thinking, Babel is it. --Sam Graham

Aspect Ratio:	16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Year:	2006
Release Date:	May 21, 2007
Runtime:	138 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P H E 9182
Keywords:	English, General, Babel, Drama
Genre:	Drama