Babel: Multi-lingual film defies stereotypes

Alejandro Inarritu (L) explaining a scene to Brad Pitt

Babel is directed by Alejandro Inarritu and stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and a host of unknowns.

Last Tuesday it was being hailed in France as the first great film about globalisation. After the first press showing in the world, the movie received rapturous applause.

Inarritu has fashioned a film of three broad stories, which overlap during the course of the movie. Pitt and Blanchett play American tourists in Morocco. They are plunged into tragedy when Blanchett's character is shot while on a tour bus in the desert.

In the US the couple's Mexican nanny takes their children across the border to a family wedding when she cannot find a babysitter for the infants.

Meanwhile in Tokyo a young deaf and mute Japanese schoolgirl is struggling to come to terms with the suicide of her mother.

At all turns the barriers of language--but more importantly the barriers of stereotypes and prejudice- result in tragic outcomes.

"I wanted to make a film about prejudice without being prejudiced," said Inarritu. "I wrote this film to be about not what separates us but what brings us together," he added.

Inarritu, 43, came to global attention with the release of Amores Perros in 2000. He followed that up three years later with the critically well-received 21 Grams.

Source: BBC News