'Babel': A troubling masterpiece
The film shifts among four groups of people in Morocco, Japan and on both sides of the California-Mexico border. In the North African country, a devastated American couple, Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett), are trying to come to terms with the death of a child. The vacation isn't working. Then a shot rings out of nowhere, and the pair's priorities are swiftly reordered.
The bullet came from a hunting rifle newly acquired by a family of Berber herders. It was just the boys Yussef and Ahmed (Boubker Ait El Caid and Said Tarchani) fooling around. But Morocco being a Muslim country that depends on Western tourists, the authorities quite understandably go on terrorist alert.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Meanwhile, back in Southern California, the nanny of Richard and Susan's two surviving kids, Amelia (Adriana Barraza), can't wait to return to Mexico for her son's wedding. When her babysitting relief fails to show up, though, Amelia makes the unwise decision to take little Debbie (Elle Fanning) and Mike (Nathan Gamble) across the border with her. A great time is had by all at the wild, colorful country reception. But getting back home is not so easy.
How these stories relate to the carnal yearnings of a deaf teenager in Tokyo remains a mystery until late in the film. Rinko Kikuchi plays the character with a fierce intensity that may be the standout performance in a movie full of near-perfect ones. Not hearing-impaired herself, the actress learned Japanese sign language for the part. But it's her facial and body language that unforgettably express the confusion, anger and desire with exquisite specificity and heartbreaking awkwardness.
The sound and visual designs of the Tokyo sequences are Babel's most complex; a disco scene is the greatest Wong Kar-wai moment the Hong Kong master never shot. But Gonzalez Inarritu and his collaborators bring equally, if very differently, surreal touches to the Saharan and Sonoran deserts, while keeping everything grounded in the most basic human conflicts, needs and emotions.