Babel

The movie "Babel" focuses on four interrelated sets of situations and characters. The first set of situation and characters are Abdullah, a goatherder in Morocco, Yussef and Ahmed, the sons of Abdullah. Abdullah bought a rifle to kill the jackals, he then gave his rifle to his 2 sons to do the job. Yussef and Ahmed were in the mountains where they ended up competing between themselves to whoever has the best aim and doubtful of the rifle's range. So they test it out aiming at rocks, then to a car, then to a bus. Yussef's bullet hits the bus hitting a tourist, named Susan Jones, which is the second set of situation and characters. Together with her husband, Richard Jones, Richard orders the bus to go to the nearest village in hoping for medication for his wounded wife. After, a helicopter comes at last. After five days in the hospital, Susan recovers and is sent home.


The third set of situation and character  tells the story of Chieko Wataya , a rebellious, deaf Japanese teenage girl, traumatized by the recent suicide of her mother. She is bitter towards her father, Yasujiro Wataya and boys her age, and is sexually frustrated. She starts exhibiting sexually provocative behavior, partly in response to dismissive comments from a member of her volleyball team. While out with friends, Chieko finds a teenage boy attractive, and following an unsuccessful attempt at socialising, takes off her panties and exposes herself in an act combining flirtation and contempt. Chieko eventually encounters two police detectives who question her about her father. She finds one of the detectives, Kenji Mamiya, attractive. She invites Mamiya back to the high-rise apartment 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. It turns out the detectives are, in fact, investigating a hunting trip Yasujiro took in Morocco. Yasujiro is an avid hunter and during a trip in Morocco he gave his rifle, as a gift, to his very skilled hunting guide, Hassan, who at the beginning of the film sold the rifle to Abdullah.

The fourth set of situation and character is in United States/Mexico where Richard and Susan's nanny, Amelia, babysits Debbi and Mike while Richard and Susan is away in Morocco. Amelia 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 impatiently tells her to cancel the wedding. Without his permission Amelia decides to take the children with her to the wedding in a rural community near Tijuana, Mexico, rather than miss it. Her nephew Santiago leaves Amelia and the 2 children in the desert, Amelia left the children in the desert to find for help. But when she came back with help, the children were not there. They were already found by the patrol and Richard.

Since the movie is multi narrative, time affected the plot and the story in a way that it is a bit confusing. But if you analyze it, you will just understand it. But with time, the plot and story of the movie is really showing the viewpoints of each situations and characters understanding further the story by connecting each subplots.


The causal motivation in the movie is because of curiosity, Yussef and Ahmed tested the range of the rifle which caused the problem in the movie. They were firing at the bus unknowingly clueless that the bullet can reach the bus which caused to his a civilian which is Susan. Also, if Abdullah did not give his rifle to his two sons in the first place, there wouldn't be any problem.