Babel

March 19, 2008 - Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett head an international cast in this 2006 drama. It won the Oscar for Best Original Score and received nominations in several other categories including Best Picture.

The film intertwines the stories of four families from Morocco, America, Mexico and Japan. Pitt and Blanchett are Richard and Susan, an American couple whose marriage is in trouble. While they're in Morocco, they've left their two children at home in San Diego with the Mexican housekeeper. Through her, we learn that Richard and Susan had a third child who died as a baby. While the couple is in Morocco, the housekeeper plans to return to Mexico for the wedding of her son, but she can't find anyone to watch the two children. So, she takes them with her. The Japanese family is connected through a high-powered hunting rifle that finds its way into the hands of some Moroccan children.

Overall review: *** The story-telling is anything but linear. The action takes place over the course of a week or so, but the timing of the vignettes is not simultaneous. In other words, we pick up the stories of the various characters at different points in time. That's not a problem. It's also not a problem that there's really no identifiable plot here. And, subtitles take care of the language problem implied in the title. Somehow, all these different elements come together to make one perfectly understandable movie. The only reason I give it three stars instead of four is because, for a movie that invests so much time in making you care about the characters, the resolution of their stories is less than satisfying.