Babel

PLOT

Babel has four main strains of actions and characters which are location-based. The film is not edited in a linear chronological order.

MOROCCO

In a desert in Morocco, Abdullah, a goatherder, buys a .270 Winchester M70 rifle and a box of ammunition from his neighbor Hassan Ibrahim to shoot the jackals that have been preying on his goats. Abdullah gives the rifle to his two young sons, Yussef and Ahmed, and sends them out to tend to the herd. Ahmed, the older of the two, criticises Yussef for spying on their sister while she changes her clothes. Doubtful of the rifle's purported three-kilometer range, they decide to test it out, aiming first at rocks, a moving car on a highway below, and then at a bus carrying Western tourists. Yussef's bullet hits the bus, critically wounding Susan Jones, an American woman from San Diego who is traveling with her husband Richard on vacation.[4] The two boys realize what has happened and flee the scene, hiding the rifle in the hills.

Glimpses of television news programs reveal that the US government considers the shooting a terrorist act and is pressuring the Moroccan government to apprehend the culprits. Abdullah, who has heard about the shooting, asks the boys where the rifle is and beats the truth out of them. Finally, the three try to flee but are spotted. The police corner the father and boys on the rocky slope of a hill and open fire. After Ahmed is hit in the leg, Yussef returns fire, striking one police officer in the shoulder. The police continue shooting, hitting Ahmed in the back, severely injuring him. Yussef then surrenders, admitting responsibility for shooting the American and asking for medical assistance; the police are shocked to realise they were shooting at children.

RICHARD/SUSAN

Richard and Susan are an American couple who came on vacation to Morocco. When Susan is shot on the tour bus, Richard orders the bus driver to the nearest village, Tazarine. The other tourists wait for some time, but they eventually demand to leave, fearing the heat and that they may be the target of further attacks. Richard tells the tour group to wait for the ambulance, which never arrives, and eventually the bus leaves without them. The couple stays behind with the bus's tour guide, Anwar, still waiting for transport to a hospital. A helicopter arrives and carries Richard and Susan to a hospital in Casablanca, where she is expected to recover.

UNITED STATES/MEXICO

Richard and Susan's Mexican nanny, Amelia, tends to their children, Debbie and Mike, in their San Diego, California home. When Amelia learns of Susan's injury, she is forced to take care of the children longer than planned and becomes worried that she will miss her son's wedding. Unable to secure any other help to care for them, she calls Richard for advice, who tells her that she has to stay with the children. Without his permission, Amelia decides to take the children with her to the wedding in a rural community near Tijuana, Mexico. Rather than staying the night in Mexico with the children, Amelia decides to drive back to the States with Santiago. He has been drinking heavily and the border guards become suspicious of him and the American children in the car. Amelia has passports for all four travelers, but no letter of consent from the children's parents allowing her to take them out of the United States. Santiago gets irritated by the authoritative control that does not want to listen to his explanation, forces the barricade with the car and drives madly. He soon abandons Amelia and the children in the desert.

Realizing that they will all die if she cannot get help, Amelia leaves the children behind to find someone, ordering them not to move. She eventually finds a US Border Patrol officer. After he places Amelia under arrest, she and the officer travel back to where she had left the children, but they are not there. Amelia is taken back to a Border Patrol station, where she is eventually informed that the children have been found and that Richard, while outraged, has agreed not to press charges. However, she is told she will be deported from the US where she has been working illegally. At the border, a tearful Amelia is greeted by her son.

JAPAN

Chieko Wataya (綿谷 千恵子 Wataya Chieko) is a rebellious teenage girl who is profoundly deaf and non-verbal. She is also self-conscious and unhappy because of her disability. While out with friends, she finds a teenage boy attractive, and following an unsuccessful attempt at socializing, exposes herself to him under a table. She has a dental appointment and tries to kiss the dentist, who sends her away. Chieko encounters two police detectives who question her about her father. She invites one of the detectives, Kenji Mamiya (真宮 賢治 Mamiya Kenji), back to the high-rise apartment that she shares with her father. Wrongly supposing that the detectives are investigating her father's involvement in her mother's suicide, she explains to Mamiya that her father was asleep when her mother jumped off the balcony and that she witnessed this herself. The detectives are actually investigating a hunting trip Yasujiro took in Morocco. Soon after learning this, Chieko approaches Mamiya nude and attempts to seduce him. He resists her approaches but comforts her as she bursts into tears.

Leaving the apartment, Mamiya crosses paths with Yasujiro and questions him about the rifle. Yasujiro explains that there was no black market involvement; he gave his rifle as a gift to Hassan Ibrahim, his hunting guide on a trip in Morocco. About to depart, Mamiya offers condolences for the wife's suicide. Yasujiro, however, is confused by the mention of a balcony and angrily replies that his wife shot herself, and that Chieko was the first to discover her. As Mamiya sits in a restaurant, watching news of Susan's recovery, Yasujiro comforts his daughter with a hug as she stands at their balcony in mourning, before the scene pans out to the cityscape.

CAST

MOROCCO

Brad Pitt as Richard Jones

Cate Blanchett as Susan Jones

Mohamed Akhzam as Anwar

Peter Wight as Tom

Harriet Walter as Lilly

Michael Maloney as James

Driss Roukhe as Alarid

Boubker Ait El Caid as Yussef

Said Tarchani as Ahmed

Mustapha Rachidi as Abdullah

Abdelkader Bara as Hassan

Wahiba Sahmi as Zohra

Robert Fyfe as Tourist Number 14

UNITED STATES/MEXICO

Adriana Barraza as Amelia Hernández

Gael García Bernal as Santiago

Elle Fanning as Debbie Jones

Nathan Gamble as Mike Jones

Clifton Collins, Jr. as Police Officer at Mexican border.

Michael Peña as Officer John

JAPAN

Rinko Kikuchi as Chieko Wataya

Kōji Yakusho as Yasujiro Wataya

Satoshi Nikaido as Detective Kenji Mamiya

Yuko Murata as Mitsu

Shigemitsu Ogi as Dentist Chieko attempts to seduce.

Ayaka Komatsu as Bikini Model in TV Commercial (uncredited).