I must admit, this movie was not quite what I expected. I thought it would be about American tourists trapped in war-torn Afghanistan. Why you would be a tourist in Afghanistan at the present moment I do not know. Regardless, that's what I was waiting for.
No dice. Babel is actually set in a number of places, none of which are Afghanistan: Morocco, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Mexico. And rather than being about a war-torn country, it's the story of a troubled marriage and the people whose lives are tangentially related to it - sort of Love Actually-style, but a couple of the connections are a little more attenuated in Babel. Some are close, but some are akin to the butterfly effect, and I didn't quite see how they fit together until the very end. There is also a little bit of a time warp aspect to it too.
The title for the film comes from the biblical allegory of the tower of Babel. The tower was a construction project of a united people, all of whom spoke the same language. When God realized that nothing they sought would be out of their reach so long as they were united, he "confounded" their tongues and scattered them across the Earth. The word babel is Hebrew for jumble or confusion.
The title for the film comes from the biblical allegory of the tower of Babel. The tower was a construction project of a united people, all of whom spoke the same language. When God realized that nothing they sought would be out of their reach so long as they were united, he "confounded" their tongues and scattered them across the Earth. The word babel is Hebrew for jumble or confusion.
Bottom line: a seriously heavy version of Love Actually. With guns.
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