Babel (2006)
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Alongside regular collaborator Guillermo Arriaga, Alejandro González Iñárritu is no stranger to fractured stories and broken lives. Both Amores Perros and 21 Grams traded in narrative and emotional acrobatics, but Babel is surely his masterpiece - a riveting account of the war on terror viewed through the lens of local tragedy.
At a time when almost every studio is thinking in trilogies, Babel is a film that illuminates and enriches Iñárritu’s previous work because it feels less like a conclusion than a culmination. In Morocco, a Japanese tourist leaves a high-powered hunting rifle in the hands of a guide, sparking a chain of events that touches people across the invisible borders of continents and cultures.
In Mexico, a nanny returning home to San Diego is stranded in a desert with two children. In Japan, a deaf-mute girl is cocooned in silence, desperately reaching out beyond the barriers of language.
This is fiercely political filmmaking, but with the most effortless of touches.
Inevitably, the West comes off worst – a brutalised society leaving a vapour trail of fear in places far beyond the gaze of CNN. But Iñárritu’s message is simple: the choices we make every day – to be afraid, to mistrust, to misunderstand – have consequences that stretch beyond our imagining, and he delivers it in breathtaking fashion.
