A Movie Review of Babel

In Babel, cause & effect scenes play out in almost random order in different parts of the world beginning from Morocco, Mexico & then Japan. A pair of young boys becomes overzealous with their gun, entrusted to them by one of the boy's father. They are goat herders living in the hills of the Moroccan interior.

They use the rifle to scare off the wolves but the boy who likes to masturbate decides to perform target practice on a tourist bus. Richard (Brad Pitt) & Susan (Kate Blanchett) happen to be on the bus. Near the end of the movie, one of the boys eventually becomes killed by trigger happy & brutal Moroccan policemen. I hope you like puzzles because the Babel movie is quite a puzzle to me.

The following are some excerpts from the movie. Richard's wife got shot, then an awkward romantic peeing scene between Richard & Susan, also his kids become lost in the desert. It seems like Richard's life is caving down on him right before his very eyes.

In my opinion, Brad Pitt is so famous that he does not have to bring any character in the Babel movie but to be himself, going on holiday in Morocco. He pretends that Kate Blanchett is his wife & vice versa which is probably enough to make the film directors happy. Richard & Susan's two children inadvertently follow their maid to her son's wedding in Tijuana, Mexico which would prove to be another blow for the family in the Babel movie.

Somewhere in the middle of the Babel movie, it is revealed that the father of the deaf & mute Japanese girl, Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) is the hunter that gave the rifle to a Moroccan man who then sold the rifle to the father of one of the goat herder boys. She is a young deaf & mute Japanese girl awkwardly explores her sexuality with her dentist & police officer.

Viewers occasionally receive a glimpse of seeing through Chieko's eyes & world of silence. All of the people mentioned above are connected to each other which are not obvious at first. I would describe viewing the Babel movie similar to waiting for bad things to happen & finding out how they would relate to each other.