Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Tragedy strikes a married couple vacationing in the Moroccan desert, which jumpstarts an interlocking story involving four different families.
Babel is an ambitious multi-strand drama from Alejandro González Iñárritu, part of his 'Death Trilogy' alongside Amores Perros and 21 Grams. The acting is uniformly strong across all four storylines — Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Rinko Kikuchi (Oscar-nominated), and the Moroccan child actors all deliver compelling work. Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography is gorgeous and distinctive, capturing Morocco's arid desert, Tokyo's neon sprawl, and the Mexican borderlands with real visual authority. The interconnected-stories format, while a hallmark of Iñárritu's style by this point, feels somewhat familiar after his earlier work, reducing its novelty somewhat. The plotting, while emotionally resonant, can feel schematic and contrived in how the storylines connect — the Japanese subplot in particular feels thinly tied to the central narrative. The ending is emotionally satisfying but somewhat diffuse given the complexity of what preceded it.