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Babel (2006)
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Movie Review by Jarrod 
August 24th, 2007
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'Babel' is the latest film from Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and it doesn't feel a whole lot different than his previous features, 21 Grams and Amores Perros, in which multiple plots were woven together and interconnected, and a large cast of characters that may or may not meet and influence one another. 'Babel' is often riveting and engrossing, and is, I think, the most stylish and well-written of the three. We have Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as Richard and Susan Jones, Americans in Morocco. She gets shot by a stray bullet, fired from a rifle by two young boys, whose father is a goat herder. They have the rifle to defend their flock from jackals. Meanwhile, Richard and Susan's children are being watched by their live-in nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza), who decides to take them with her back to Mexico for her son's wedding, an event she understandably does not want to miss. They are transported there by her nephew Santiago (Bernal), and she intends to come back the next morning, but things go terribly wrong.
In Japan, a deaf girl named Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) tries to seduce every guy she meets, flashing her vagina in public even stripping naked without a moment's notice, all apparently because she saw her mother kill herself and feels ignored by her father. As you can tell, this last segment was my least favorite, and it is tied quite tenuously and implausibly to the others. Kikuchi's performance is intense and fascinating, and I like how we get complete silence as we see things from her perspective, and she has to do a lot with facial expressions and bodily gestures, since she cannot speak, but the camera meditates on her nude body, and seems to exploit her, and presents her as little more than a floozy. Pitt and Blanchett are terrific, a lot of crying between them, understandable given the situation, and they display emotion well, they look good together and have solid chemistry. The most poignant moments are those with the two Moroccan lads, and their father, all three pursued by the police, who shoot first and ask questions later, and are willing to slap people around to get the answers they need. I was troubled by what would clearly be police brutality, but maybe things work like that in Morocco.
The segment with Amelia very nearly brought me to tears, with a stunning Barraza as a kind-hearted woman unaware of her status as an illegal alien, who loves the children dearly and is willing to give her life for them, but the reckless and stupid behavior of her nephew leaves them stranded in the desert near the US border, which causes many problems. 'Babel' addresses the timely issues of illegal immigration, the chaos and tragedy of the problem itself, and also shows how a small event can be construed as terrorism, if it happens in an Arab or Muslim country, to a white person, from America or from Europe. Superb cinematography, editing, and music, make 'Babel' a particularly notable achievement. However, Innaritu should really try a different kind of movie.
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