Babel [HD DVD]

Babel [HD DVD]
by Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu

Babel [HD DVD]

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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Mohamed Akhzam, Peter Wight
Director: Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu
Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: Arabic (Original Language); English (Original Language); French (Original Language); Japanese (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 143 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-02-20
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Paramount Home Entertainment

Movie Reviews of Babel [HD DVD]

Movie Review: Complex, but Rewarding
Summary: 4 Stars

This is trilogy of stories that slowly evolve into a common theme and connections. Languages, cultures, classes, and countries weave into a fabric of common connections.

A rifle is the center of the film. It becomes part of a local goat herdsman's property in Morocco. He has two young sons (Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait El Caid) who take care of the goats but also play with the rifle. During target practice with rocks one son inadvertently takes a shot at a tour bus. Both sons see the bus stop and realize something is wrong. They run back to their home and hide the gun as they realize what trouble they started.

Traveling in the tour bus in the back roads of Morocco are Richard and Susan (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett). They are a wealthy young couple who have just lost a child. Their other two children are at home in San Diego with their illegal Mexican housekeeper and nanny, Amelia (Adriana Barraza). Susan has been irritable and upset most of the trip. After a meal she does not enjoy they get on the tour bus and start down the winding back roads of Morocco. Susan leans against the window and the gunshot comes through hitting her in the shoulder near the neck. Richard and the Tour Bus passengers panic and try to find hospital or help near by as Susan is bleeding and in much pain. Finally they find a small town nearby, but still need competent medical care.

Richard calls home to tell Amelia she needs to stay with the children longer than expected. Amelia is upset as she was planning on attending her son's wedding in Mexico. She makes a decision to go anyway and take Richard and Susan's children with her. They have great fun at the wedding and Amelia's son does not want her to leave Mexico. She says she has to return with the children - and her nephew drives them back. Immigration officials cause a problem and near disaster in the desert when trying to come back to the United States.

Then the film zips to Tokyo and a rich widower (Koji Yakusho) who is tied to the rifle that shot Susan. He worries and is torn about his deaf daughter (Kinko Kikuchi). She is angry she has no hearing and no mother. Her anger at a sports game upsets him. He seems to talk to her about her attitude (There are no subtitles). She is upset when boys back away from her when they realize she cannot hear. She wants to be loved and have a life of fun and boyfriends like other young girls. She is bold, promiscuous, determined and angry. Her actions are both shocking and sad.

This is a very intimate peek into each life. It is deeply, darkly emotional and yet very thoughtful on the love of families as well as cultural misunderstandings. We see humanities connectedness and how we all make mistakes whether rich or poor. Life is complicated as is this movie.

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Summary of Babel [HD DVD]

In Babel, a tragic incident involving an American couple in Morocco sparks a chain of events for four families in different countries throughout the world. In the struggle to overcome isolation, fear, and displacement, each character discovers that it is family that ultimately provides solace.

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.

In this mesmerizing, emotional film that was shot in three continents and four languages - and traverses both the deeply personal and the explosively political -- acclaimed director Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros) explores with shattering realism the nature of the barriers that seem to separate humankind. In doing so, he evokes the ancient concept of Babel> and questions its modern day implications: the mistaken identities, misunderstandings and missed chances for communication that-- though often unseen-- drive our contemporary lives. Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garc?a Bernal, K?ji Yakusho, Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi lead an international ensemble of actors and non-professional actors from Morocco, Tijuana and Tokyo, who enrich Babel's take on cultural diversity and enhance its powerful examination of the links and frontiers between and within us.

Brilliantly conceived, superbly directed, and beautifully acted, Babel is inarguably one of the best films of 2006. Director Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu and his co-writer, Guillermo Arriaga (the two also collaborated on Amores Perros and 21 Grams) weave together the disparate strands of their story into a finely hewn fabric by focusing on what appear to be several equally incongruent characters: an American (Brad Pitt) touring Morocco with his wife (Cate Blanchett) become the focus of an international incident also involving a hardscrabble Moroccan farmer (Mustapha Rachidi) struggling to keep his two young sons in line and his family together. A San Diego nanny (Adriana Barraza), her employers absent, makes the disastrous decision to take their kids with her to a wedding in Mexico. And a deaf-mute Japanese teen (the extraordinary Rinko Kikuchi) deals with a relationship with her father (Koji Yakusho) and the world in general that's been upended by the death of her mother. It is perhaps not surprising, or particularly original, that a gun is the device that ties these people together. Yet Babel isn't merely about violence and its tragic consequences. It's about communication, and especially the lack of it--both intercultural, raising issues like terrorism and immigration, and intracultural, as basic as husbands talking to their wives and parents understanding their children. I??rritu's command of his medium, sound and visual alike, is extraordinary; the camera work is by turns kinetic and restrained, the music always well matched to the scenes, the editing deft but not confusing, and the film (which clocks in at a lengthy 143 minutes) is filled with indelible moments. Many of those moments are also pretty stark and grim, and no will claim that all of this leads to a "happy" ending, but there is a sense of reconciliation, perhaps even resolution. "If You Want to be Understood... Listen," goes the tagline. And if you want a movie that will leave you thinking, Babel is it. --Sam Graham

Beyond Babel

Other Interweaving Storylines on DVD
Other DVDs by Director Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu
Why We Love Cate Blanchett

Stills from Babel (click for larger image)

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