"Babel" centers on several groups of people in 4 countries that are all connected by one freak accident
Alejandro González Iñárritu takes us from North Africa to North America to Asia
His film exposes four unconnected story lines that are eventually divulged to be inextricably linked to one another
The first involves an isolated family of goat herders who live in the High Plateaus of the Moroccan desert where two young boys are testing a rifle's range handed by their father to protect their goats from jackals...
The second concerns a Middle-class American couple on a bus tour of Morocco trying to save together their damaged marriage
Meanwhile, in the US, there is grave danger for an undocumented immigranta Mexican nanny as she tries to return to United States after she wrongfully decides to take her two blonde-haired young charges to her son's wedding across the Mexican border, despite her employers' sudden change of plans, that needs that she remains with them and miss the joyful occasion
And on the opposite side of the world, we follow, in Tokyo, an alienated, confused deaf and mute teenage student, recovering from her mother's suicide, who eases her feelings of depression and loneliness by trying to win the friendship or attention of every man or adolescent who crosses her path
She flirts with sexual exhibitionism to attract the attention of her distant and uncommunicative father
"Babel" tries to make a point and the point is that when people can't or won't communicate, unpredictable paths can lead to tragic consequences
It also tries to leave a message of how a 'shooting' from a simple 'gift' can set off a chain reaction of tragic events in three continents and four countries over which the different characters have exceedingly uncomfortable human emotion
Out of the entire cast, it is only Rinko Kikuchi as Chieko who steals the movie especially when she transmits to her friends her mad decision of sexual aggressiveness, saying to all: "Now they're going to meet the real hairy monster." This scene remembered me, in some way, Sharon Stone uncrossing legs in "Basic Instinct."
