ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

adam-may-bower 'Babel' is a well-acted melodrama, with four separate stories, that may be compelling, but don't exactly fit well with each other. The whole intent of this film was to tell four different stories of people across the globe, and then connect them all. While three out of the four stories do connect nicely together, the fourth plotline about Japanese girl Chieko stands out far too much from the rest of the film and is poorly tied, with an insignificant connection. The three 'key' stories, involving Yussef and Ahmed (played by Boubker Ait El Caid and Said Tarchani) in Afghanistan, joined by Richard and Susan (played by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) as well as Amelia (played by Adriana Barraza) in Mexico all fit well together and display a captivating and sorrowful story. The characters are directly involved with one another, and they are even set in a similar desert climate which gives similar aesthetics and enhances the feeling of connection. In stark contrast, the story about Chieko (played by Rinko Kikuchi) is set in the modern city of Japan and is loosely connected to the others. Her storyline may be a good one in its own right, but it ultimately doesn't fit with the rest of the puzzle that is the film. However, this disconnect is not to the demise of the film as it is redeemed by the fantastic acting, with Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, Mustapha Rachidi and Adriana Barraza being clear highlights. Alejandro G. Iñárritu's direction is brilliant as this film is filled with captivating shots of the different settings and the cinematography is striking. The real highlight of this film is in the soundtrack, by Gustavo Santaolalla. The music is extremely effective in provoking the emotional response intended for its audience and is certainly deserving of it's Oscar win. Overall, this film is an epic piece of misery, that is only let down by its hit-and-miss attempt at telling different stories that are meant to connect well.

ajjose-18905 People, whatever be their religion, language or economic conditions are ultimately the same; they go through the same tribulations and have the same emotions; a shared humanity unites us all. A deaf mute girl struggles with sexual rejection and the loss of her mother to suicide in urban Japan. An American tourist in Morocco is accidentally shot by a shepherd boy trying out his new rifle. A Mexican nanny in Texas has to figure out a way to attend her son's marriage although she has been denied a leave as the parents of her wards are away. These seemingly unrelated stories are brought together through a thin connecting link. This is a heartbreakingly beautiful and poignant movie.

ElMaruecan82 ... said Alejandro Inarritu while contemplating the wall between America and Mexico and the human flows circulating from one side to other, legally or not… yet all the borders in the world wouldn't amount to a hill of beans if people decided to sit and talk, to take time to understand each other. To quote another director, it was Jean Renoir who thought-provokingly said during a friendly chat with actor Michel Simon that laziness was underrated, because civilized people, rather than acting, preferred talking and make the world a better place, with words as a first step.And this is how "Babel", as magnificent a title as it is, is misleading; the Biblical episode symbolized the human hubris and its divine punishment: dividing people by languages. However, those who populate the film are ready to overcome these barriers, out of fraternal impulses, curiosity and sometimes, necessity. This hymn for universality is even more powerful because it doesn't ignore the specificity of the ground it walks on, whether Moroccan mountains, the urbane belly of a Japanese metropolis or a small Mexican town across the desert, Inarritu explores each identity, each form of expression, not to say that we're all the same, but so we gather the certitude of our own differences before concluding that we're still the same… after all.There comes a point in "Babel" where we stop seeing the children of a goat shepherd, or the deaf daughter of a Japanese businessman (Rinko Kikuchi) or two big stars playing American tourists (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) or a Mexican nanny (Adriana Barraza) taking her employers' children to her son's wedding. Indeed, we stop labeling them from their origins, we only see two brothers victim of childish temptations, the tragedy of three fathers, deafness as a convenient alibi while there's more to make communication difficult. We see a woman who worked hard all her life and decided to please herself just for once and compromising everything she built, and we see a couple trying to find to overcome a marital crisis before Karma intervenes through an accidental bullet.Yes, there's a moment where we embrace the poetry of Inarritu, the realization that the air we breathe is the same, the way we break down after seeing a loved one bleeding to death, the way our pain can be either silent or tearful, the way we gaze at the sky with the same amazement, the way we're all humans… there's a moment where the Mexican woman, after wandering for hours in the middle of the desert, sees a car and starts running, hysterically shouting, she doesn't scream in Mexican, she's just letting her heart vent the last gasps of desperate energy. The film is full of countless moments where to identify the existence of a universal language: we all nod and shake our head the same, and sometimes, a foreigner is closer than a compatriot. Actually, many tragedies in the film occur because of secrets, silences and misunderstandings within the same culture.Another marvel of Hyperlink Cinema, "Babel" doesn't rely on a complex non-linear storytelling where you only get everything at the end, the stories are simple and could have made powerful dramas in their own right, but they all converge toward the same recognition of universality. It's a powerful journey into our own humanity, a movie one should watch before stating that there are some countries deserving to be invaded. The day, there'll be "Babel" about North Korea or Iran, maybe people will start to act reasonably. Because like for human relationships, sometimes, more than love, more than respect, understanding is the key element, understanding someone is like learning empathy. You can't bomb a country if you're empathetic, you can't make a terrorist attack either. I called the film universal, it's more than that: it's humanist and it's essential.And after watching it, I wanted to know more about the project, convinced that the finished result was as fascinating as the journey that made it. And yes, the making-of provided many additional elements to understand the complexity of human language, that could have made a great sequel to the film. There were three moments that stood out and they were set in my country, I loved that Inarritu was surprised to learn that one of the Moroccan extra (playing the old lady) didn't understand one word in Arabic, and they needed a Berber interpret, putting the Palestinian interpret in a tricky situation. Later, during a shootout, I saw the female interpret being upset and I knew it was reminding her of some memories. I didn't need explanation, her eyes said it all. Finally, during a rain, Moroccan crew men were singing under an umbrella and one of the assistants asked them if it was a song to stop the rain, they nodded and kept laughing. It was just a pop song from the 70's, well sometimes; we're entitled to our little private jokes.Because languages aren't only here to separate us, they reinforce us within a group and allow us to be best prepared to talk to the others, there's no "other" without a strong identity, and the efforts to overcome the languages also allow you to better understand the people, it's all about universal understanding but not at the expense of human diversity. Inarritu must have had troubles with Moroccan language but when he embraced the two kids at the end of the shooting, he didn't need any word to understand their grief, and didn't find any to console them. Understanding, emotion and pain…. that image, both sad and beautiful, spoke a thousand words.Inarritu made a timeless and universal movie, establishing Cinema as an art-form that transcended the barriers of languages and culture. Maybe more than ever, we need movies like "Babel". If the Academy wasn't busy giving a sympathy Oscar for Scorsese, they would have acknowledged the cinematic importance of "Babel" and its incomparable beauty.

anonymouse9999 Babel is essentially one condescending scene after another. In theory it sounds ideal; there are many characters all intertwined by the same depressing event. But the film does nothing to justify any of this. In the world of Babel parents lack any common sense and give loaded weapons and ammunition to their children to go play without supervision. Lets suspend our disbelief that the children are stupid enough to shoot at a bus for target practice. So the police are immediately searching for the shooters and one cop picks up some pebbles on the ground so they know they are from the middle of nowhere. The cops don't hesitate to assault civilians while interrogating them. They also think its OK to kick someone hard enough to break the persons ribs to extract some information. But when they see our child shooters they tell them not to walk between the graves. Apparently they only care about the people they are sworn to serve and protect if they freaking die!! Then they roll up on some unarmed civilians and right away they start shooting at them without even knowing who they really are and kill a boy in the process. But its alright they can simply explain later that it was a big misunderstanding! Our beautiful American tourist is shot and its all over the international news despite the fact that they are in a remote village with no members of the press to be seen. And the anxious husband decides to pull in to a village because he thinks there is a good doctor only to find a veterinarian with dirty hands attempting to stick a rusty needle in his wife's bloody arm. He is not compelled to get back on the bus but instead enables the torment and then acts like a maniac when the passengers curse him and threaten to leave him! Need i say more? I think you get the idea!