Babel- It's Three, Three, Three, Movies in One!

Babel is a prestige film built to show the interconnectedness of people. Too bad it doesn't connect with itself. I love movies with interlocking storylines. I highly recommend seeing Amores Perros and 11:14. But the key to intersecting storylines is that they must intersect in a significant way and that the events of one storyline must change the events in another. Babel's three plotlines are so disconnected that you spend the entire movie wondering why all these scripts got packed into a single film. Did they have a bunch of shorts lying around and decide to cut them together at the last minute? Am I supposed to find it profound that these people have a vague connection?

Two of the three movies, shot tourist and illegal border crossings, were actually pretty good, but they would have been better as separate movies than jammed together in the same one. The story of deaf, Japanese slut was irredeemable under any circumstances. (Pro tip: When driving the densely packed streets of Tokyo, do not attempt to communicate by sign language.)

I found the story of shot tourist the most compelling of the bunch. To further bifurcate the film it contains two subplots, but these are the automatically connected plots of many crime dramas: victim, cops, and criminal. This had all the elements of political drama exploring the themes of racism, terrorism, political gamesmanship, and US foreign policy towards the Muslim world, and had the story been allowed to stand on its own it would have made a great film. At one point, help is delayed because the American government doesn't want the tourist to be evacuated by a Moroccan ambulance. This is all explained in one line of dialog because apparently the off-screen plotline which showed the political reasoning and wrangling involved in this decision was too connected to the main story to be included in the final cut. While this omission does add to the air of  helplessness our tourists are feeling, I can't help but feel cheated out of seeing some slimy politicians at work. Had this poltline stood on its own their would have been room for this story. I'm not sure if it would have ultimately enhanced that hypothetical film, but there was certainly no room for it in this one.

The story of illegal border crossings stars the tourists kids and their housekeeper. On its face, a good connection between the plotlines, but in reality, other than being out of town, the tourists are not involved in this story. They are Macaulay Culkin's family in Home Alone. Somehow, things go amiss as two illegal immigrants attempt to cross a border checkpoint in the middle of the night while the driver was intoxicated and belligerent to the officers and bringing two children which are clearly not their blood relatives across without their parent's permission. Instead of realizing how completely they screwed up and facing he consequences of their actions, the immigrants attempt to flee taking the kids along with them leading to three near and one actual death. Brad Pitt is apparently completely unaware of all this until its already over.

So how does deaf, Japanese slut fit into the story? Her dad once went to Morocco and gave a rifle to a guy who sold it another guy, who gave it to his kids, who shot a tourist, who swallowed a dog, who swallowed a cat, who swallowed a frog, who swallowed a fly which wriggled and giggled and wallowed inside her. I think she'll die. (I may have gotten a little off track there.)

Or maybe I just missed the point. Perhaps the message is that we are all alone and despite superficial connections, such as appearing in the same movie, we are all isolated from one another a desperate for a meaningful connection.