Babel ★★★½ 2006 (R)

A father in a Moroccan village allows his two young sons to shoot his hunting rifle and an international incident is sparked. The boys innocently aim at a tourist bus, never believing the bullets could actually hit someone. They do, of course, and this one foolish act leads to complications that will encompass a Mexican nanny and her Anglo charges back in California and an angry deaf-mute teenaged girl in Tokyo. Somehow director Gonzalez Inarritu manages to tie the stories together (with a certain amount of unbelievability). Pitt and Blanchett join an impressive international cast who live up to this gritty, realistic dramatic puzzle. 142m/C DVD, Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD . US Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal, Adriana Barraza, Elle Fanning, Koji Yakusho, Nathan Gamble, Rinko Kikuchi, Said Tarchani, Boubker Ait El Caid, Mustapha Rachidi, Abdelkader Bara; D: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu; W: Guillermo Arriaga; C: Rodrigo Prieto; M: Gustavo Santaolalla. Oscars '06: Orig. Score; British Acad. '06: Orig. Score; Golden Globes '07: Film—Drama.

Babel, Tower of in the Bible, a tower built in an attempt to reach heaven, which God frustrated by confusing the languages of its builders so that they could not understand one another (Genesis 11:1–9). The story was probably inspired by the Babylonian ziggurat, and may be an attempt to explain the existence of different languages.

Babel

a confused mixture of sounds, voices, or languages; a confused assembly. See also charivari, hubbub, pandemonium.

Examples: babel of follies, 1529; of past idle objurgations, 1884; of sectaries, 1731; babel towers of chimney, 1848.

ba·bel / ˈbabəl; ˈbā-/ • n. [in sing.] a confused noise, typically that made by a number of voices: the babel of voices on the road.

babel XIV (see Gen. 11:9). — Heb. bābhel Babylon.