Babel

Babel (Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza) – To enjoy this dark, multi-cultural story of three families and their interconnections, it helps to think about Traffic and Crash.  If you do that, you’ll choose this as third best because it’s more heavy-handed and less surprising.  At its heart, it’s the story of a rifle that is given to a Moroccan guide by a Japanese businessman, then sold to a friend of the guide’s, then is used by young children to accidentally shoot a tourist, who is the mother of two children who travel to Mexico with their illegal-alien nanny.  The stories are family tales at their heart: (1) the Japanese businessman who is widowed in a suicide and has to bring up his deaf-mute, sexually-awakened daughter, (2) the Moroccan family whose children are typical kids who never learn how to use a weapon, and (3) the American family headed by Pitt and Blanchett, who lose a child to SIDS, travel to Morocco to get some time alone and leave their two remaining kids to the caring, loving nanny.  Unlike Traffic or Crash, which connect the stories logically and beautifully, there are no revelations here.  The only questions that keep you engaged are whether Blanchett will survive, whether their kids will be found alive, how the Moroccan family will face the tragedy they caused, and whether the Japanese girl will ever get the help she desperately needs.  You must be ready for the experience here to enjoy it, and you might leave thinking it was a waste of time or an interesting effort by the director of 21 Grams, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.