In the remote sands of the Moroccan desert, a rifle shot rings out--detonating a chain of events that will link an American tourist couple’s frantic struggle to survive, two Moroccan boys involved in an accidental crime, a nanny illegally crossing into Mexico with two American children and a Japanese teen rebel whose father is sought by the police in Tokyo. Separated by clashing cultures and sprawling distances, each of these four disparate groups of people are nevertheless hurtling towards a shared destiny of isolation and grief. In the course of just a few days, they will each face the dizzying sensation of becoming profoundly lost--lost in the desert, lost to the world, lost to themselves--as they are pushed to the farthest edges of confusion and fear as well as to the very depths of connection and love.

Babel is a powerful and introspective look at today’s modern world where the story of three people who are on opposite ends of the earth still have the same feelings and touch each others lives if only briefly. Much like Crash last year’s multi-story and character driven movie that examined racism in a city where their actions touched each other like ripples in a pond, Babel examines those same ripples on a global scale rather than a small demographical area like Los Angeles. And rather than dealing with racism and its effects Babel is about terrorism and fear but more so about fear on a global scale. When an American woman is gunned down in a remote Moroccan desert in a truly accidental and foolish tragedy rather than discover the true roots of this crime the first and lasting reaction is that it was an act of terrorism. Gone is the innocence of a world when an event would have been challenged and probed with greater depth the police and the world instantly jump to the idea of it being an act of a terrorist shaped by today post 9/11 world where everyone sees a terrorist under ever rock and behind every bush.

The movie is an example of how our world has changed, how our views have changed, how we have changed. This movie wouldn’t have worked ten years ago before the fear of terrorist had struck so close to home. Twenty years ago it was about the cold war or Vietnam those were the ideas that gave us fear, no it is about unknown bombers and gunmen killing in the name of terror. The movie unfolds to let us know that our own fears, our own prejudices may be wrong and that we should still examine the world without these prejudices. It is still about race and the look of things, the Arabian look man is blamed for it because of the color of his skin. We live in fear and that fear is a ripple in the pond of global events.

The young deaf-mute feels this fear, disenchanted from the world, no wholly apart of the world she lives in, desperate and lonely for contact to break up the fear of the silent world she is forced to live in. Her fear is different but it is still fear, she does not fear terrorism she fears being alone, fears not being able to communicate with the world around her. Her inability to communicate is like are inability to communicate with the Aramaic world, and this silence this misunderstand of each other is what breeds our fear.

Or of the Mexican housekeeper that has lived in America for sixteen years but a mistake at the border leads her to running across the border like so many of her countrymen, scared and worried because of the fear and ignorance of a few border police who see her as a criminal and not as a person. She is as a mother to these American children but her own nationality and the prejudices of this nationality has led to them all being in danger by the fear of her nephew who tries to escape through the desert.

The movie is powerful as are the performances especially Koji Yakusho who gives the movie the heart and soul of the movie, the true feeling of loneliness and fear even though surrounded by lights and people that she is still alone despite all the noise. Brad Pitt also puts in a magnificent performance as he nearly truly breaks down and you can feel his desperation. The movie will touch you, it will move you and is one of the best films of the year.

Grade: B