2007's Oscar Nominated Films, Volume 1: Babel

I love movies, always have and probably always will. As a budding actress, it behooves me to study, if you will, those films the acting community deems worthy of accolades and praise as some of the best pictures of the year. Taking it upon myself to see as many of the Oscar-nominated films as I could muster, take the following first installment with a grain of salt and, perhaps, view this year's Oscar Broadcast a little more educated and in the know...

BABEL directed by Alejandro Innaritu, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett

The first of the nominees I watched, I saw this movie the day it came out. I'm a sucker for a good trailer and this movie looked intellectual enough to intrigue me. More than anything, I found the title rather apropos, obviously taken from the bible story of the Tower of Babel. According to scripture, the people were building a tower to try to reach Heaven and God, and in doing so, displeasing the very entity they thought they appeased. As a result, God confounded the languages so that no one could understand each other.

Babel weaves it's first storyline of two American Tourists, a married couple played by Pitt and Blanchett, vacationing in Morocco with that of two shepherding Moroccan boys playing with a rifle, of which their father came into possession by a Japanese Tourist. Standing on a low mountain top with the rifle and their herd, one bets the other he can hit the bus that's coming toward them on the road below. He subsequently misses, but his younger brother hits it, the stray bullet piercing the torso of Blanchett's character. This lone incident starts the chain of events upon which the movie hinges. The Japanese tourist who owned the gun has a rebellious teenage daughter who is deaf. Her storyline, a rather somber one, deals with the loneliness she feels, and the lengths to which she will go to "belong". The tourists have a Mexican nanny/housekeeper who is illegally in the country. She tries unsuccessfully to get someone to watch her charges so she can attend a wedding across the border from Southern California in Mexico for her son. She is thwarted by the delay of the parents, who are dealing with the wound of the mother in Morocco. The Tourists are in a very rural area of the country on a bus tour and find themselves hours away from proper medical care, completely unable to speak the language and entirely dependent on the help of a kind stranger. The Nanny runs into problems getting the white children back across the border, her son making matters more worse than they should have been.

A movie such as this is very hard to put into a nutshell, and I am surprised I did it as well as I did. Very strong performances are given by newcomers Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi, the Nanny and the Deaf Japanese teenager respectively, and are both nominated in the Best Supporting actress category. Brad Pitt was nominated for a golden globe in the Best supporting actor category and the movie won several Golden Globes, including Best Picture. The Movie is also up for Oscars for Best Director, best screenplay, etc.

Though it reminded me of a more somber Crash, Paul Haggis' triumph for 2006's Oscar for Best Picture, I liked this film. The language barriers at the heart of all the conflict in Babel as well as the association with the film's title and the images it conjures, intrigued me and kept me on the edge of my seat. It is definitely unlike any movie I have ever seen before, even given the parallels to Crash. I was impressed with all aspects of the film: the acting, the editing, the directing, the music, the writing. Anytime you take a word such as Babel and the images it subsequently conjures and successfully capture those images in a modern film dealing with racism, pain, wanting to belong, etc, I will probably enjoy it. I will, however, say for those who are concerned, the movie is definitely rated R for graphic language, a couple of scenes of graphic nudity, and violence. For these reasons, it will not be one I will own.