Babel

Babel (2006) tells four stories across three continents, all connected to a single rifle. In Morocco two shepherd boys test a rifle and fire at a distant bus. An American tourist on that bus is hit. At the same time in California the Mexican nanny looking after that couple's children takes them across the border for her son's wedding. In Japan a deaf girl cannot carry her relationship with her father or her own isolation. What joins them is failed communication. Everyone is trying to say something and nobody is understood: they lack the language, they cannot hear, or there is nobody listening. The Japanese section is the best part of the film and the most loosely attached to the plot. In a nightclub the sound cuts out entirely and moves into what she hears. Rinko Kikuchi was nominated for an Oscar; she spent months learning sign language properly. In the Moroccan and Mexican sections most of the cast are not professionals but local people. It completes Iñárritu's trilogy with Amores Perros and 21 Grams. After it he fell out with the writer Guillermo Arriaga and the two never worked together again. The order of the narrative is deliberately scrambled; the events are not simultaneous. It runs 143 minutes. Good for: multi strand narrative, world cinema, and character drama. Less good for: the pace is slow, the film is bleak, and some sections are weaker than others.