Babel (2006) dir. Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu

Babel, the latest film by the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, has received wide recognition for its undeniable cinematic merits, together with an also widespread rejection by a number of critics for creating a narrative so multi-layered and ubiquitous that the audience finds itself often displaced, at a loss. Another observation has been that the whole experience is too painful, not only for the characters but also for the spectators, as if the amount of anxiety involved in the experience was worthy of a warning about the tension that from the very beginning installs itself in the viewer. With the unfolding of the story, this same tension turns into a crescendo of anxiety capable of keeping you at the edge of your seat, as you helplessly prepare for the worst, yet still are unable to give up hope. But this is not a horror movie.

What is peculiar about this anxiety is how subtly and consistently it is orchestrated around a concern for the fate of the children in the story, as if Inarritu was tapping into an emotional response deeply wired, connected to a natural, universal, caregiving response.

The film involves a web of intersecting stories, with events in one corner of the Earth reverberating elsewhere on this truly global setting. For the sake of clarity each strand will be told on its own, bypassing the director's intention to weave all of them together. In fact, each strand contains its own drama, and its own resolution.

The author is not new to stories involving exposure to extreme loss, as anyone who saw 21 Grams will remember. In Babel, a tragic loss transpires at the beginning: a baby's cot death. The surviving two siblings, a girl and a younger boy, still very shaken, are left in the care of their Mexican nanny, Amelia. We can see that she cares for them with great love and devotion, and we pick up from phone calls with one of the parents that there are difficulties