Babel contains four main storylines with seemingly unconnected characters. The stories are not told in linear or chronological order. As the movie unfolds, the audience learns how each plot is intertwined with the others.
In a desert in Morocco, Abdullah, agoatherder, buys a gun from his neighbor 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. Doubtful of the rifle's purported range, the two decide to test it out, aiming at rocks and highway traffic. Yussef manages to hit a bus, critically wounding an American woman who is traveling with her husband on vacation.[7] The two boys flee the scene and hide the rifle in the hills.
Glimpses of television news programs reveal that the US government considers the shooting a terrorist act and is pressuring the Moroccan government to apprehend the culprits. Abdullah, who has heard about the shooting, asks the boys where the rifle is and beats the truth out of them. Finally, the three try to flee but are spotted. The police corner the father and boys on the rocky slope of a hill and open fire. After Ahmed is hit in the leg, Yussef returns fire, striking one police officer in the shoulder. The police continue shooting, hitting Ahmed in the back, severely injuring him. Yussef then surrenders, admitting responsibility for shooting the American and asking for medical assistance; the police are shocked to realize they were shooting at children.
Richard and Susan are an American couple who came on vacation to Morocco. Their infant son Sam recently died ofSudden Infant Death Syndrome, putting a strain on their relationship.[8] When Susan is shot on a tour bus, Richard orders the bus driver to the nearest village,Tazarine. The other tourists wait for some time, but they eventually demand to leave, fearing the heat and that they may be the target of further attacks. Richard tells the tour group to wait for the ambulance, which never arrives, and eventually the bus leaves without them. The couple stays behind with the bus's tour guide, still waiting for transport to a hospital. A helicopter arrives and carries Richard and Susan to a hospital inCasablanca, where she is expected to recover.
Richard and Susan's Mexican nanny, Amelia, tends to their children, Debbie and Mike, in theirSan Diego, California home. When Amelia learns of Susan's injury, she worries that she will miss her son's wedding. Unable to secure any other help, she calls Richard, who tells her to stay with the children. Without his permission, Amelia decides to take them with her to the wedding in a rural community nearTijuana, Mexico. Rather than staying the night at the party, Amelia drives back to the States with her nephew, Santiago. He has been drinking heavily and the border guards become suspicious of him and the American children in the car. Amelia has passports for all of them, but no letter of consent from the children's parents allowing her to take them out of the United States. Under pressure, Santiago speeds away in a drunken panic and abandons Amelia and the children in the desert, whereupon awakening in the morning they soon begin to suffer from heat exhaustion.
Amelia leaves the children behind to find help, ordering them not to move. She eventually finds a Border Patrol officer, who places her under arrest. They travel back to where she left the children, but they are not there. Amelia is taken back to a Border Patrol station, where she is eventually informed that the children have been found and that Richard, while outraged, has agreed not to press charges. However, she will be deported from the US where she has been working illegally. At the border, a tearful Amelia is greeted by her newlywed son.
Chieko Wataya (綿谷 千恵子Wataya Chieko) is a rebellious teenage girl who is deaf and non-verbal. She is also self-conscious and unhappy because of her deafness. While out with friends, she finds a teenage boy attractive, and following an unsuccessful attempt at socializing, exposes herself to him under a table. At a dental appointment, she tries to kiss the dentist, who sends her away. Chieko encounters two police detectives who question her about her father, Yasujiro. She invites one of the detectives, Kenji Mamiya (真宮 賢治Mamiya Kenji), back to the high-rise apartment that she shares with her father. Incorrectly assuming that the detectives are investigating her father's involvement in her mother's suicide, she explains to Mamiya that her father was asleep when her mother jumped off the balcony and that she witnessed this herself. The detectives are actually investigating a hunting trip Yasujiro took in Morocco. Soon after learning this, Chieko approaches Mamiya nude and attempts to seduce him. He resists her approaches but comforts her as she bursts into tears.
Leaving the apartment, Mamiya crosses paths with Yasujiro and questions him about the rifle. Yasujiro explains that there was no black market involvement; he gave his rifle as a gift to Hassan, his hunting guide on a trip in Morocco. About to depart, Mamiya offers condolences for the wife's suicide. Yasujiro, however, is confused by the mention of a balcony and angrily replies that his wife shot herself, and that Chieko was the first to discover her. As Mamiya sits in a restaurant, watching news of Susan's recovery, Yasujiro comforts his daughter with a hug as she stands at their balcony in mourning.
Babel can be analyzed as anetwork narrative in which its characters, scattered across the globe, represent different nodes of a network that is connected by various strands. The movie not only incorporates quite a large number of characters but they also are, as is typical for network narratives, equally important. It is noticeable thatBabel has multiple protagonists who, as a consequence, make the plot more complex in relation to time and causality.
One of the central connections between all of the main characters is the rifle. Over the course of the movie, the viewer finds out that Yasujiro Wataya visits Morocco for a hunting trip and gives the rifle as a gift to his guide, Hassan Ibrahim, who then sells it to Abdullah from where it gets passed on to his sons. Susan Jones, in turn, is shot with that very same rifle which also has a tragic impact on Amelia Hernández's life. It is observable that "all characters are affected by the connections created between them – connections that influence both their individual trajectories as characters and the overall structure of the plot".[9]
It shows how a single object can serve as a connection between many different characters (or nodes in a network) who do not necessarily need to know each other. Even though the rifle is not passed on any further, it continues to influence the characters' lives in significant ways. This demonstrates how the smallest actions on one side of the world can ultimately lead to a complete change of another person's life elsewhere, without there being any form of direct contact between the two (also seeButterfly effect). It also creates a small-world effect, in which "characters will intersect again and again"[10] either directly or indirectly and mostly by accident. As Maria Poulaki observes, characters in network narratives "meet and separate not because of the characters' purposeful actions but as an outcome of pure chance".[9]
In one of the earlier drafts of the script written byGuillermo Arriaga, the Japanese deaf girl was originally a Spanish girl who had recently become blind.
Earlier the main leading couple problems were infidelities, but a child death was introduced to allow Pitt to better understand his character.
According toAlejandro González Iñárritu, the locations of the film played a key role in his life. He made a life changing trip to Morocco at 17. In his previous travels to Japan, he was convinced to return with a camera someday, and finally his own move from Mexico to the USA was also present in the film.
Asked about the idea for the film, which is credited to Arriaga and González Iñárritu, the former said, "It is credited to him because I had this story first placed only in two countries. He asked to have it in four and that's why he has the 'idea by' credit." Asked also if the idea of settingBabel's two other stories in Morocco and Japan was from González Iñárritu, Arriaga answered "No, he said put it wherever you want".[11]
When the then 23-year-old (24 when the actual filming began)Rinko Kikuchi auditioned, in July 2004, for the role of Chieko, Iñárritu was surprised by her talent but was reluctant due to her not being deaf. The casting process continued with hundred of actresses in the following nine months, with Kikuchi ultimately winning the role in April 2005, a week before filming began.[12][13][14]
At the volleyball match inTokyo, most of the audience spectators were played by deaf people.[15][16]
Principal photography began using16mm film[19] on 2 May and wrapped on 1 December 2005. Several different types of film stock, including three-perfSuper 35mm,35mm, 18.5anamorphic, were later utilized to give each location a distinct look.[1] After filming, director Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga had a falling-out regarding the authorship of their previous film,21 Grams.[20] Arriaga argued that cinema is a collaborative medium, and that both he and González Iñárritu are thus the authors of the films they have worked on together. González Iñárritu claimed sole credit as theauteur of those same films, minimizing Arriaga's contribution to the pictures. Following this dispute, Iñárritu banned Arriaga from attending the2006 Cannes Film Festival screening ofBabel, an act for which the director was criticized.[21]
Babel was selected to compete for thePalme d'Or at the2006 Cannes Film Festival.[24] It was later screened at theToronto International Film Festival.[25] Itopened in selected cities in the United States on 27 October 2006, and went into wide release on 10 November 2006.[4]When the film was released in Japan in 2007, several moviegoers reported queasiness during a scene in which Rinko Kikuchi's character visits a nightclub filled with strobe lights and flashing colors. In response, distributors administered a health warning describing the scene.[26]
On 20 February and 21 May 2007,Babel was released onDVD byParamount Home Entertainment in the United States and the United Kingdom respectively.[27][28] On 25 September 2007, Paramount re-released the film as a two-disc special edition DVD. The second disc contains a 90-minute 'making of' documentary titledCommon Ground: Under Construction Notes.[29]Babel has also been released on thehigh-definition formats,HD DVD, andBlu-ray Disc.[30][31]
On its first week of release on DVD in North America (19–25 February 2007),Babel debuted #1 in DVD/Home Video Rentals.[32] Total gross rentals for the week, were estimated at $8.73 million.[33] In the first week of DVD sales,Babel sold 721,000 units, gathering revenue of $12.3 million. By April 2007, 1,650,000 units had been sold, translating to $28.6 million in revenue.[34] In July 2008, its US DVD sales had totaled $31.4 million.[35]
Released in seven theaters on 27 October 2006, and then released nationwide in 1,251 theaters on 10 November 2006,Babel grossed $34.3 million in North America, and $101 million in the rest of the world, for a worldwide box office total of $135.3 million, against a budget of $25 million.[4][18]Babel is the highest-grossing film of González Iñárritu'sDeath Trilogy (includingAmores perros and21 Grams[36]), both in North America and worldwide.[37][38]
Babel received generally positive reviews. Review aggregation websiteRotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 68% based on 203 reviews, with an average rating of 6.80/10, making the film a "Fresh" on the website's rating system. The critical consensus states that "InBabel, there are no villains, only victims of fate and circumstance. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu weaves four of their woeful stories into this mature and multidimensional film."[39] AtMetacritic, the film received aweighted average score of 69/100, based on 38 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable" reviews.[40] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.[41]
Film criticRoger Ebert includedBabel in hisThe Great Movies list, stating that the film "finds Iñárritu in full command of his technique: The writing and editing moves between the stories with full logical and emotional clarity, and the film builds to a stunning impact because it does not hammer us with heroes and villains but asks us to empathize with all of its characters."[42]
