4/5 Complex, but Rewarding
  by Loyd E. Eskildson (Phoenix, AZ.)
This is trilogy of stories that slowly evolve into a common theme and connections. Languages, cultures, classes, and countries weave into a fabric of common connections.

A rifle is the center of the film. It becomes part of a local goat herdsman's property in Morocco. He has two young sons (Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait El Caid) who take care of the goats but also play with the rifle. During target practice with rocks one son inadvertently takes a shot at a tour bus. Both sons see the bus stop and realize something is wrong. They run back to their home and hide the gun as they realize what trouble they started.

Traveling in the tour bus in the back roads of Morocco are Richard and Susan (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett). They are a wealthy young couple who have just lost a child. Their other two children are at home in San Diego with their illegal Mexican housekeeper and nanny, Amelia (Adriana Barraza). Susan has been irritable and upset most of the trip. After a meal she does not enjoy they get on the tour bus and start down the winding back roads of Morocco. Susan leans against the window and the gunshot comes through hitting her in the shoulder near the neck. Richard and the Tour Bus passengers panic and try to find hospital or help near by as Susan is bleeding and in much pain. Finally they find a small town nearby, but still need competent medical care.

Richard calls home to tell Amelia she needs to stay with the children longer than expected. Amelia is upset as she was planning on attending her son's wedding in Mexico. She makes a decision to go anyway and take Richard and Susan's children with her. They have great fun at the wedding and Amelia's son does not want her to leave Mexico. She says she has to return with the children - and her nephew drives them back. Immigration officials cause a problem and near disaster in the desert when trying to come back to the United States.

Then the film zips to Tokyo and a rich widower (Koji Yakusho) who is tied to the rifle that shot Susan. He worries and is torn about his deaf daughter (Kinko Kikuchi). She is angry she has no hearing and no mother. Her anger at a sports game upsets him. He seems to talk to her about her attitude (There are no subtitles). She is upset when boys back away from her when they realize she cannot hear. She wants to be loved and have a life of fun and boyfriends like other young girls. She is bold, promiscuous, determined and angry. Her actions are both shocking and sad.

This is a very intimate peek into each life. It is deeply, darkly emotional and yet very thoughtful on the love of families as well as cultural misunderstandings. We see humanities connectedness and how we all make mistakes whether rich or poor. Life is complicated as is this movie.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bing brings you health info from trusted sources. Try it now!

5/5 A FEELING MOVIE, NOT A FEEL-GOOD MOVIE
  by Charles J. Garard Jr. PhD (Jilin City, China)
BABEL is one of those films that are not often made anymore, and it takes a non-American director to bring it off. It is good to see in this age of TRANSFORMERS and X-MEN and Bruce Willis action pieces that we can still have movies that are about ideas, not just escapism.

The reviewer for Amazon, Sam Graham, is spot-on in his analysis and overview. This is clearly not a film for everyone -- only for those of us who who care to think and who recognize that lack of communication is a central problem throughout the world. Americans are not the only ones who often fail to see what is going on under their noses, and who can realize that small issues can quickly escalate into monumental ones. A mistake, such as taking the children of an American couple across the border into Mexico, quickly grows into a life-threatening event, and the parents of the children, who we don't realize until later, are Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchette -- tourists in North Africa who must resort to some difficult-to-watch crude surgery. That those top-billed stars in what is an ensemble piece are not given the full-focus of the long film is not the point. This is not a pretty-boy movie, or even a pretty movie. It is gritty and real, and all of the characters are shown as having clay feet.

If we think that we are really in charge of our lives, we need to think again. At any moment, something can happen which can throw what we think are our self-absorbed and ordered existences into a tail spin -- often because of our own short-sighted perspectives and often because of someone's else's -- wherever they happen to be in the world. The rifle fired carelessly by the boy is the center piece -- the center of the spider web, but the rest of the web strands may seem to be unconnected to the rest until near the end. The story in Japan seems to be unrelated to the other stories until we discover that the rifle used by the boys halfway around the world is one that the father of the deaf-mute originally furnished. Dismiss this as the butterfly effect if you wish, but the connections exist if we are careful enough to look.

The story about the deaf-mute girl in Japan (portrayed by Rinko Kikuchi who was, as she should have been, nominated for an Academy Award) is not as separate as we might first think. In fact, it is her inability to communicate with her father and her friends in an area of the world where personal defects are looked down upon by peers that turns out to be a microcosm for the entire, far-flung story. Her frustration is the distillation of what is wrong with all of us -- we don't take to listen to, or understand, others around us. As a professor who has taught in China for many years and has learned how personal ailments and birth defects are sometimes looked down upon as reflecting weaknesses in character, I understood the Japanese girl's painful frustration. Boys ignore her because she cannot speak to them, and even her father, until the very end in a touching finale, is unable to comprehend her needs and angst. She wants and needs to be recognized as a human being, even if it means only being a sexual being. She, like most of us, needs to be understood for who we are and not expected to be exactly like everyone else.

For obvious reasons, I did not show the film in class to Chinese students, but I did loan it to a former female student. She asked me in an Instant Message why the girl showed, as she put it, her beaver to the boys in public. I told her that she felt that since she could not be noticed as a teenage girl wanting to fit in with the others, she would show herself as a sexual object, which is what, she felt, the boys only cared about. She would get attention in the only way she knew how, even if it meant making sexual overtures to a mature dentist or to a police officer who comes to her home in her father's absence. Of course, she is reeling from the death of her mother and even makes up her own version to explain her untimely demise, but her issues are even deeper and more inward-focused than that.

Even the Brad Pitt character learns that some people, even in a third-world nation, are not interested in helping others for a reward. When he offers money to the man who has helped save his wife's life, he is amazed when his money is rejected. Even in these days of constant terror threats, some people -- in any corner of the globe -- are still human and, more importantly, humane. This humble native of Morocco is not like Pitt's fellow tourists who want to get on with their trip; he is selfless and resourceful, willing to help an American tourist whose wife's life is threatened.

That this film ends with the deaf-mute girl standing nude on the terrace with her father is perfect because it exemplifies the theme of the entire, skillfully woven tapestry. If we don't communicate with others and reconcile our differences -- whether real or perceived -- we are doomed to live in isolation.

When BABEL was overlooked for an Academy Award in favor of the Martin Scorsese film THE DEPARTED, an American remake of a Japanese film, I was disappointed but not surprised. After all, that gangster film, full of violence and vile language, was more accessible to the American public. It was easier to accept a film full of pretty boys and the scene-stealing Jack Nicholson, people who settle their differences by shooting each other, than a film where one single shot fired in stupidity can affect us so dramatically. It's like that uncanny Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. See if you think we are all really unconnected from each other.

1/5 Goes Nowhere
  by Elliott (L.A.)
This film relates to two popular concepts: the "butterfly effect" and "when it rains it pours." I feel this film is a slick attempt to manipulate these concepts. In Babel the butterflies are very big and it rains in the desert.

A rifle is fired carelessly in Morocco. A Japanese girl is devastated by her mother's death. A nanny decides to take two children under her care across the border into Mexico without their parents' permission. These events all come together and have a traumatic impact on many different people. People suffer in this film.

Particularly slick and exploitive is the segment about the deaf teenager. Her story is only very tenuously connected to the others. The viewer must decide why it is included.

A lot of money was spent and a couple of star actors were hired. For what purpose? What do we learn? Who was entertained? The actors followed their directions and the script...to nowhere.



5/5 Babel
  by Simon M. Lam (CA, USA)
This movie has the similarity like the Crash. It has mini stories that all come together at the end. If you have seen Crash I think this is a better version of it.

4/5 Man, I cried so much...what is wrong with me?
  by Angela Schmidt (Knoxville, TN)
Babel is such a fitting title for this movie that focuses on the theme of universal pain and hope. All the different barriers we face with the clash of cultures were very well demonstrated. Great movie, but it was a little too real and frustrating at times.

I cried at the end, way too much for my own good. I sat there with my tear-stained, mascara-smeared face and was surprised at my outburst of emotions. It was just so powerful and wonderfully moving...or maybe I just get too into movies. Anyway, I highly recommend it.