Movie Review - Babel

The following is a counter-point to the well written review posted by my esteemed (future) colleague and (present) classmate Jobes.

The movie Babel is concerned with finding that which binds humanity together. I think the movie finds it; a bit clumsily maybe but it's there. My knowledge of biblical stories is rather limited but if I understand the story of Babel from the book of Genesis it's about how humanity at one time all spoke the same language and tried to build a tower that would reach the heavens. As a punishment, God made people speak different languages so no one could understand one another and sent people to different parts of the world.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu starts from from a similar perspective. Every scene from each of the four stories is completely disparate from one another. From craggy hills in Morocco to the bustling pulse of life in Tokyo to a wedding in Mexico, Inarritu does a great job at capturing the essence of the location and the people who live there. However, what works even better is the language that can be heard beneath the Spanish, English, Arabic and Japanese. There is no need for subtitles when it comes to the language of human emotion. Love, fear, anguish, dispair, confusion, loneliness - all are instantly recognizable and evoke strong emotions in anyone willing to listen past everything else that seperates us.
The movie isn't with out its flaws. The most interesting story centres on a deaf and mute teenage girl in Japan. Unfortunately, this also has the weakest tie to the other stories. However, the underlying principal is still significant. Our world has become so interconnected that small gestures and actions can have far reaching and increasingly global consequences.
Bottom line - I liked this movie. I didn't leave it wanting to see it again but it made me feel something while I watched it.