Babel

Director Inarritu once again moves in a terrain he knows intimately, bringing several parallel storylines to the screen, which intersect at a certain point and with certain characters. He once again delivers heightened emotions, moral conflicts, clashes of values, and cruel dramas. This time, he also seeks to explore various cultures in a globalized world. Only the story from Tokyo didn't fit into the whole, although I understand that Inarritu couldn't resist incorporating into his film a panoramic shot of Tokyo illuminated by neon lights and thousands of bulbs. This section of the film reminded me more of Atom Egoyan's productions and deserves its own film. Overall, it seemed to me that, unlike his debut film Amores Perros, this film contains less energy and leans more toward beautiful camera shots capturing the rocky Sahara, wedding celebrations in Mexico, or the Nevada desert. However, it is such a visually mesmerizing spectacle that I have no problem awarding it five stars. Inarritu is one of the most talented directors of our time. Overall impression: 90%. (07/04/2010)

Iñárritu reached the peak in his journey through mosaics. I would like to say that he took the best from Amores Perros and 21 Grams and combined them together, but that is not the case. Nonetheless, Babel is still the director's best work. He managed to avoid a bit of the unfortunate confusion from his previous film, endowed all the storylines with emotional richness, and mixed everything in a way that from the first second, for more than two hours, I hardly breathed. And it wouldn't be Iñárritu if there wasn't some message present in his film. Babel almost screams for humanity, solidarity, and help, which in some moments brings tears to the viewer's eyes, while in others simply freezes them. (02/27/2007)

A beautiful film, albeit in the saddest possible way. For the third time, this time across the planet, A.G.I. tells, through incredibly fragile and gritty stories, the hardships, but also the "occasional" joys of life, the prejudices stemming from fear and unwillingness to accept anything that breaks out of the so-called norm, but mainly about the impermanence of life, about how in a mere second, one ill-considered, even unintentional act can overturn and destroy everything we have believed in so far. I have no doubt that Iñárritu has been able (and I hope he will continue to be able) to reach a remarkable number of people from different cultures around the world with his sensitive storytelling and precise direction. Babel is a very worthy conclusion to a loose trilogy, not inferior to Amores Perros or 21 Grams; on the contrary, the way in which the individual stories are connected is, in my opinion, the most mature and cultivated of the three films. (10/30/2009)

Alejandro González Iñárritu stubbornly sticks to the refined style that appealed to so many viewers in his previous two films. I used to be a fan of Amores Perros, but I didn’t like that much the celebrated 21 Grams. I enjoyed Babel less than AP but more than 21 Grams. It’s a mosaic composed of three, and therefore four, stories. If they did away with the one about the whiny Japanese girl, the film would be less than two hours long and I would likely be a little more satisfied. I don’t mean by this that the Japanese story was uninteresting, no, but it’s so distant and with a different atmosphere, and it always distracted me from the dirty desert settings of Mexico and Morocco. Moreover, its connection with the other two stories is only symbolic. (08/04/2011)

An ambitious shot in the dark. It has some moral ideas, but they’re wrapped in an insanely lengthy filler that pretends to be an artistic rebellion against the traditional narrative, but it's just a few classically punctuated episodes in an aimless structure. The actors are excellent and some scenes are very strong, but that's not enough. 2 ½*. (08/06/2018)