Babel (2007, HD DVD)

"And they said, Go to,
let us build us a city and a tower,
whose top may reach unto heaven ....

"And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one,
and they have all one language ....
and now nothing will be restrained from them,
which they have imagined to do.

"Go to, let us go down,
and there confound their language,
that they may not understand one another's speech.

"So the LORD scattered them abroad
from thence upon the face of all the earth ....

"Therefore is the name of it called Babel ...."

--Genesis 10:4-9

Babel is a tour de force, the kind of film that will have you talking about it on your way to the parking lot - and probably again for days to come. Like Steven Soderbergh's 2000 film, Traffic, this is a super-film, weaving together multiple storylines. But where that film wanted to look at a single issue - the drug trade - from multiple angles, this film tells the story of a single international incident as it plays out across three different continents. It's a single story told in English, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese and International Sign - which is, itself, a metaphor for the film's enduring theme: that we don't understand each other. The language barrier is nothing compared to the secrets, stories and perspectives so easily overlooked as we grope about in blundering confusion. This is a smart film that packs a punch.

At the heart of the story, penned by Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) is an American couple - Richard and Susan (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) on vacation in Morocco. It's a trip going badly because they're not really there to see the sights. This is a marriage hanging by its teeth for reasons best discovered in the film. During a dusty bus-ride through the desert, a single shot is fired into the bus, hitting Susan. But who shot her and why?

As one might expect, the shooting sparks international attention, becoming a cause celebre. Dominoes are falling, some of them as expected, some of them in whole new directions. But the film isn't about the incident so much as the human condition. As the story fans out, we meet others, tangentially connected in a sort of "six degrees of separation" chain of humanity. In a lesser film, their involvement would have more to do with the development of the story. Here, the real treasure is a connection to the film's master theme - of how we are disconnected from one another, unable to understand perspectives outside of our own.

This is a film with some great subplots, including that of Yussef and Ahmed (Boubker Ait El Caid and Said Tarchani) - two boys suspected by local police of being involved in the shooting. One of my favorite characters is Amelia (Adriana Barraza), a Mexican housekeeper looking after Richard and Susan's children. The delayed return of Richard and Susan puts her in a bind because her son is getting married in Mexico - and in Mexico, as anywhere else, mothers don't pull no-shows at their son's wedding. But to make the wedding, Amelia will have to haul the children off to Mexico, an adventure in babysitting that could have unforeseen consequences.

Another great subplot involves Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), a Japanese student who feels cut off from the larger world because she's deaf. As the daughter of Yasujiro (Koji Yakusho), an important Japanese businessman, she lives in a modern-day tower of Babel, overlooking the lights and nightlife of downtown Tokyo. But behind her privilege and opulence, there are signs that Chieko is a troubled young woman, unable to tell the police, her father or her friends all that is on her mind.

This is a film with an endless array of great scenes. I don't want to spoil the fun, if that's an accurate description of the viewing experience. Director Alejandro Gonzalez Innarritu, goes out of his way to drop us into the myopic mindset of the film's interconnected characters. This is a film that saturates - and disrupts - the senses. It's also a film where the audience experiences the irony of sensing what the characters can't. There are times we, the audience, have the critical distance deprived of these characters, who are acting in the moment. Because of that, we can see the folly in their actions, even if they can't. There's a fatalism to this film that is practically Shakespearean - or Biblical - as its characters grope their way through a darkened maze of interests, desires, perspectives and prejudice.

Babel is a film that doesn't pull punches. If you're used to having your plots served up like fast food, this is not the film for you. It wants you to scratch your head at times. By the same token, if you like to wear your seat belt even at the movies, you may want to check out something else. This film does not pull punches. When bad things happen, this film doesn't ask itself whether a few screeners will be offended if art really does imitate life. As such, it's not a film for the faint-hearted. It's a film that dares to overestimate the audiece's intelligence.

Because of that, I'm willing to call it one of the best films of the year.