The ensemble drama Babel is perhaps the crowning achievement thus far by writing/directing team Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams, Amores perros). It is up for seven different Oscars® this coming weekend, including a best director nomination for Iñárritu and a best original screenplay nomination for Arriaga.

Babel basically works on the butterfly effect theory of storytelling (e.g., the idea that if a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the globe, the motion can set off a ripple effect of events that ultimately results in a tornado elsewhere). It tells the story of several different groups of loosely interrelated people and the individual tragedies that befall them.

There are Richard and Susie (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett), a San Diego couple who go on a trip to Morocco to try to get over the death of one of their children and find themselves fighting for Susie's life; Amelia (Adriana Barraza), their nanny who runs up against Bush's border patrol when she crosses to Mexico under dubious circumstances to get to her son's wedding; Ahmed (Said Tarchani) and Yussef (Boubker Ait El Caid), the Moroccan children who accidentally shoot Susie when playing with the shotgun their father got to help tend their livestock; and Yasujiro (Kôji Yakusho), the wealthy Japanese businessman with the tormented deaf daughter, whose shotgun started it all.

I can understand why Babel is up for so many Oscars®--it is elegantly written and shot, and harrowing to watch. The suffering each character experiences is palpable, gritty, and realistic. Although that also is what makes a movie like this hard for me to fully embrace. Arriaga's script shows all this misery brought on by seemingly innocent--or at the very least understandable--decisions, and for what? What's the message behind it? There is pointless, random suffering of tremendous magnitude throughout the world...the end? True, the mindset of acceptance that life isn't necessarily going to be nice or easy (to say the least) might be common amongst non-Americans. But it also has the potential to induce the paralysis-inducing fear that there is nothing you can do to protect yourself from horrible pain. And as someone who has grappled with that way of thinking my whole life, I have a hard time celebrating it.

No matter what side of that debate you fall on, though, there is no arguing that the all the actors turned in powerful and impressive work. It's nice to remember that Brad Pitt can act, even if they did put him in pointless age make-up for reasons I can't deduce. I was especially moved by the tremendous isolation and loneliness communicated by Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), Yasujiro's deaf daughter. Both she and Barraza are up for best supporting actress, and I don't envy the Academy's position of having to decide between the two of them.

ReelzChannel Rating: 

What's on the Disc:

Nada. Rien. Nothing.

It doesn't matter what language you say it in, the Babel DVD is entirely devoid of special features.

Check out ReelzChannel.com's Babel page for clips from the film and more!