I saw this on Friday, (Nov. 10) and wanted to talk about it immediately. Babel was one of those non-linear movies using sensitive connective tissues to assure that you stay engaged in the experience.
It worked.
This filmmaking technique keeps popping up... think:
The Constant Gardener
Syriana
Memento
All About My Mother
Traffic
And then there's
Crash (I know you're wincing... don't let this reference push you from seeing this one. It's just using a similar filmmaking technique.)
It's the loss of a child, of a mother, your older brother. It's painful, desperate, raw, violent and angering. It's sharing the human experience through displaying more than just one person's story. It hopes to connect us all, whether it's through relating to one or more of the character's lives, or paralleling a situation that we've lived through.
If you saw Alejandro González Iñárritu's
21 Grams or
Amores Perros definitely see Babel.