Babel

2006 Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

If You Want to be Understood...Listen

Tragedy strikes a married couple on vacation in the Moroccan desert, touching off an interlocking story involving four different families.

Brad Pitt Cate Blanchett Gael García Bernal Adriana Barraza Rinko Kikuchi Koji Yakusho Satoshi Nikaido Harriet Walter Michael Maloney Dermot Crowley Peter Wight Elle Fanning Trevor Martin Aaron D. Spears Alex Jennings Mohamed Akhzam Matyelok Gibbs Claudine Acs Michael Peña Jamie McBride Clifton Collins Jr. Mónica del Carmen Nathan Gamble André Oumansky Wendy Nottingham Linda Broughton Lynsey Beauchamp Aline Mowat Michel Dubois Show All…

Alternative Titles

火線交錯, 巴别塔, Вавилон, 바벨

drama

143 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Lucy ★★★★ 5

one gun... really fucked everything up and made everyone sad
Review by brat pitt ★★★★½ 1

me before watching babel (2006): can't wait to see brad pitt & cate blanchett as a couple! love them :)
me after watching babel (2006): ple a s e... kill me , i beg
Review by CinemaClown ★★★½ 6

From the director of Amores Perros & 21 Grams, Babel is the third & final chapter of Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu's Trilogy of Death which once again employs the multiple-narratives structure interconnected by a single event, further explores the prevalent themes of the last two chapters while adding a few more & features captivating performances from its much more diverse cast to finish the trilogy on an admirable note.
Set in 3 different countries & interweaving 4 distinct plot lines, the story of Babel is triggered by a rifle bought by a Moroccan herder whose sons, while testing it, end up wounding an American woman who was vacationing there with her husband. When the two are unable to return home on time, their children's caretaker…
Review by DirkH ★★½ 4

A film about language and communication would normally grab my interest immediately. For the better part of this film the sheer quality and topics of most of the separate stories managed to do just that. There is enough to enjoy here, with strong performances and interesting subjects.
It is, however, also infuriatingly moronic in its contrived and forced narrative link. It makes a capital mistake in that it feels the incessant need to 'mean something'. It does so by force feeding us a link that is supposed to give the separate stories a common meaning/purpose. What it fails to recognise is that the stories by themselves manage to bring across the commonality just fine, keeping the uniqueness of their narrative and clearly distinct feel.
It is extremely annoying that in its attempt to please its audience and naive need to tie up loose ends it fails to see the quality that is already there.
Review by Sam Meltzer🏳️‍🌈 ★★★★ 12

2006 RANKED
Babel:
- A bunch of stories that intertwine
- Great acting
- Great directing
- Writing is precise and smooth
- The script makes people sound like real people
- Works well as an ensemble piece
- Well-shot
Crash:
- A bunch of stories that intertwine
- Fine acting
- Horrible directing
- Writing is messy and doesn’t make sense
- The script is blatantly racist and no one sounds like a real person
- Does not work well as an ensemble piece
Pretty sure you get the point
Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★½ 24

What a load of wank. Babel adds up to nothing. Stuff happens, but nothing really happens, and it all means nothing. I would have called it pretentious wank but it's so empty I don't even think it's trying to say something.
Alejandro González Iñárritu is a technical master as a director, but that simply isn't enough. His stripped back debut, Amores Perros, is easily his best work that I've seen. Yet in Babel his wizardry serves no purpose. The entire structure is artificial, and not in a way that adds value since it's meant to be a film of simple humanity. There's two great set pieces, one at a US-Mexico border crossing and another when a group of Japanese teenagers…
Review by Felipe Fritz ★★★★½

Watching this movie is an emotionally draining experience and I love it.
The cast is incredible. Everyone gives amazing performances. The music is also really beautiful.
It's a fascinting look at the lives of so many different characters from very different parts of the world. How their stories connect isn't that important, since I was riveted by each and every one if them.
Review by lucy ★★★ 1

i still stand by the fact that brad pitt is an underrated actor.
Review by feedingbrett ★★★★ 8

Very few climbed up the cinematic ladder as swiftly Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu did, with three remarkable films by 2006, starting with Amores Perros and ending with Babel, it paved the way of a beautiful future for the director, with notable actors keen to collaborate with him and studios wanting to tap onto his creative resources, knowing that this is a man who possesses a passion and skill of storytelling, knowing that under his guidance, they are in safe hands.
Inarritu’s third, and hopefully not final, collaboration with Guillermo Arriaga returns to the loose and unstructured narrative format, assembling multiple characters and multiple dramatic instances, as the connecting threads slowly surface, sourced from a singular event that would either directly or…
Review by Libby Caldwell ★★★½ 2

Films Watched in 2020 - Film 228
Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-20 - Film 36/38
Liked the concept of this more than the film itself. Lots of clever moments surrounded by some slightly more forgettable ones.
Review by paul a. ½ 3

iñárritu further proving himself 2 be the master of crafting obnoxious, contrived af pieces of white elephant art by making something straight out of the farhadi school of radical "empathy" (read: having every character act as unreasonable as possible under the guise of investigating the human condition, when it's just an excuse to progress rote drama) instead of trying to examine how these events are triggered from the failures of neo-liberal international institutions. but that would actually take some level of formal talent beyond "have people shouting and crying and play some sad music; humanism."
Review by megan ★★★

the world is ugly, but cate blanchett and brad pitt are beautiful to me

Recent reviews

Review by Liam Whyte ★★★★

cate blanchett is phenomenal, pretty much everyone in this movie is phenomenal
Review by Frank Y. ★★★★

I was reading a book called Babel earlier today and I had chosen this movie out of the blue, which is probably the coolest coincidence since the pandemic's started. What a sad life.
I can't count on my fingers the number of movies I've watched that follows this sort of Butterfly-effect anthology plot, with the exception of Contagion, but this is certainly a niche genre that I'm a big fan of. Sure, it's chronologically weird, but with this kind of film it's easy to make out the themes which are supposedly common to each of the stories showcased (spoiler alert: it's always love). For some of the chapters, it does feel like the scriptwriter tried to shoehorn in some sentimental bits towards their respective ends, but otherwise, Babel was genuinely entertaining and more emotionally nail-biting (i.e. sadder) than I expected.
Review by DJjdsports ★★★★

Eventually I will learn to communicate just as the characters in this film have.
Review by thedonovankidd ★★★★

well the movie looks amazing and sounds amazing and for a while there it felt amazing bbbbut i do think there are some issues with the story losing momentum in the third act, and with the theme coming off a little bit in my fucking face especially when you sit back and think about how some of this shit is kinda stretching believability a little bit. also i do love brad pitt and im sure he played an important role in selling this movie but him and cate blanchette are like so obviously themselves and their movie-starness really sticks out in this movie where almost every other character is played by lesser known actors.
Review by kioy

<img src='https://pthumb.lisimg.com/0/50full.jpg' style="float:left;" />
Babel

Rating: 7/10
Review by kioy

<img src='https://pthumb.lisimg.com/5590/50full.jpg' style="float:left;" />
Babel

Rating: 8/10
Review by The Bucket And the List ★★★★

A cleverly executed multi-dimensional thriller with a brilliantly underpinned story about victims of fate. This compelling quadrivial drama intertwines quite grippingly and blows our mind away.
Known for his artistic and masterful skills, Alejandro has weaved another spectacular quartet of stories and intersected them quite brilliantly. Though Babel follows a known cinematic technique, it wins at the execution level.
Brad Pitt shines as usually among the slew of less familiar actors. But none of them seem like a novice. That includes the Moroccan kids as well. It baffles me to witness them act the way they did. When everyone on board delivers a raw and unadulterated performance, you put yourself in their plight for a moment and the movie carries…
Review by Kelly ★★★

56/100
Babel AKA Crash 2: International.
It's the same crap. Look how deep and connected we are despite our differences.
Problem is some of these segments are more interesting than others. I was most interested in Chieko's segments. They were shot really interesting and the switching to no sound stood out. i really wanted to know more of what was going on here. Brad Pitt/Cate Blanchett's segment was only interesting because that's where the big stars were. Watching them perform. Too bad Blanchett didn't get to do much. The Mexican wedding with the kiddos was frustrating because it was just a number of bad choices and we don't find out what happened to Santiago. Also don't really find out what…
Review by Patrick ★★★

None of these characters were likable, but also Cate Blanchett smoking dope on a rug was pretty hot.
Review by Oli ★★★★ 1

(Alejandro G. Iñárritu ranking)
Alejandro G. Iñárritu‘s final instalment in his ‘Death trilogy’ is probably my favourite.
Again, Iñárritu sticks with the tried and tested non-linear narrative and it probably works the best out of the Death trilogy films here in Babel.
The story of how one shooting can effect multiple people across the world is told brilliantly and I don’t think it could’ve been executed better to be quite honest.
Each time you’d get emotional invested in a character or it really started to intensify it would switch stories to another just to keep you wanting more.
I would now probably class Iñárritu as one of my favourite directors, especially having now seen all but one of his filmography. Babel is definitely up there with his best.
Review by enzo ★★★

damn she was really horny
Review by grgmrtns ★★★★½

86/100