BABEL(2007) - English

Anyone expecting any kind of fast action and racy sequences might as well stay out of the movie. Neverthless its a good and a meaningful movie that would appeal to your senses. Its the story of four different set of characters, at four different places speaking four different languages. First there is this man at a Morrocan desert who buys a rifle to protect his goats. His son accidentally shoots an American tourist vacationing at Morraco. The injured tourist and her husband are taken to the nearby village to get the lady cured. The kids of the American couple are left at San Diego to be taken care by their Mexican care-taker. The care-taker has to leave to mexico to attend her son's wedding. Knowing quite well that their parents would not be coming for a few more days, the care-taker leaves to mexico with the kids. Right at the other end of the earth, at Japan, a young deaf and mute girl craves for some human contact while her widower father tries hard to communicate with her.

so moves the movie, going forth from one story to another. A connection between all the four stories is established and with all the characters experiencing grief in the form of lonliness, lonliness and more of lonliness. The care-taker faces problems while reentering the American border from Mexico with her nephew and the two kids. The police search and chase the Morrocan gun owner and his two kids and finally kills one while trying to catch them. The American couple have no words for each other while the lady is recovering from her injury in a small one roomed house with no facilities. The japanese father is being searched by the police in connection with the gun that was sold to the Morrocan man. The media blows the news of the gun shot out of proportion and declares it a terrorist attack. The entanglement of all the four stories reach an all time high as the story culminates.

The movie has got amazing performances by the lead artists. A surprisingly good performance comes from Brad Pitt, who plays the role of the American father. cate Blanchett as the American mother is just about good. The best performances though come from Adriana Barraza, playing the role of the Mexican care-taker and Rinko Kikuchi, playing the role of the young japanese girl. The scenes in which Adriana wanders with the kids and the scenes in which she is interrogated have come out wonderfully, thanks to Adriana's mindblowing performance. Rinko Kikuchi also carries her role as the deaf and mute girl brilliantly and her eyes speak volumes.

Some of the scenes are unneccesarily lengthy. The scenes keep running while you wait for something to happen, but nothing does. These scenes could have been edited which could have shortened this long movie. The scenes keep shifting from one place to another abruptly giving the whole movie as such an unended feeling. There are so many languages spoken in this movie like japaneese, Morrancon Language, Spanish, a little of english. There is this sign language too to be understood. Eventhough including so many languages provide the movie with authenticity there is a greater amount of confusion in the minds of the audience. The movie is definitely not like Crash which had a greater impact. Eventhough comparrisons with Crash seems unneccesary, halway down watching the movie, one is bound to feel the similarities to Crash, or moreover the influences of crash. The scene with the Mexicans and the border patrol reminds us of the scene with Matt Dillon and Thandie Newton in Crash and the scene also seems like a stereotype eventhough true.

The movie is handled really well technically. The background music, which is mostly the work of one guitar jells with the movie eventhough it lacks grandeur. The cinematography is handled excellently with the camera moving from one landscape to another with ease. The screenplay swifts between stories leaving scenes abruptly unended but it looks like its been done deliberately to give the movie a different kind of a feel. The director, Alejandro Gonsalez Inarritu has taken a lot of efforts to give us a good movie but he just misses it somewhere but still its a good movie to watch and to reflect at after you finish watching.