Babel (2006)

Babel is a 2006 psychological drama film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga. It stars an ensemble cast. The multi-narrative drama completes Arriaga’s and Iñárritu’s Death Trilogy, following Amores perros and 21 Grams. It is an international co-production among companies based in the United States, Mexico and France. The film portrays multiple stories taking place in Morocco, Japan, Mexico, and the United States. Babel was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, where González Iñárritu won the Best Director Award. The film was later screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film opened in selected cities in the United States on 27 October 2006, and went into wide release on 10 November 2006. Babel won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, and received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for both Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza, winning for Best Original Score.

Babel has four main strains of actions and characters which are location based. The film is not edited in a linear chronological order. In a desert in Morocco, Abdullah, a goatherder, buys a .270 Winchester M70 rifle and a box of ammunition from his neighbor Hassan Ibrahim to shoot the jackals that have been preying on his goats. Abdullah gives the rifle to his two young sons, Yussef and Ahmed, and sends them out to tend to the herd. Ahmed, the older of the two, criticises Yussef for spying on their sister while she changes her clothes. Doubtful of the rifle’s purported three-kilometer range, they decide to test it out, aiming first at rocks, a moving car on a highway below, and then at a bus carrying Western tourists. Yussef’s bullet hits the bus, critically wounding Susan Jones, an American woman from San Diego who is traveling with her husband Richard on vacation. The two boys realize what has happened and flee the scene, hiding the rifle in the hills.