Babel
The movie focuses on four interrelated sets of situations and characters, and many events are revealed out of sequence. The following plot summary has been simplified, and thus does not reflect the exact sequence of the events on screen.
In a remote desert location in southern Morocco, Abdullah, a goatherder, buys a high-power rifle and a box of ammunition from his countryman Hassan to shoot the jackals that have been preying on his goats. Abdullah gives the rifle to his two teenage sons, Yussef and Ahmed (played by local non-professional actors Boubker Ait El Caid and Said Tarchini), and sends them out to tend the herd. Competing gently between themselves and doubtful of the rifle’s purported three-kilometer range, they decide to test it out, aiming first for rocks but then for a bus carrying Western tourists on the highway below. Yussef’s bullet hits the bus, injuring Susan Jones (Cate Blanchett), an American woman from San Diego who is traveling with her husband Richard Jones (Brad Pitt) on vacation. The two boys realize what has happened and flee the scene, hiding the rifle in the hills that night.
Glimpses of television news programs reveal that the US government holds the shooting to be a terrorist act and is pressuring the Moroccan government to apprehend the culprits. Having traced the rifle back to Hassan, the Moroccan police descend quickly on his house and roughly question him and his wife until they reveal that the rifle was given to him by a Japanese man, and then sold to Abdullah. The two boys see the police on the road and confess to their father what they have done. (They believe at the time that the American woman has died of her wounds.) The three flee from their house, retrieving the rifle as they go. The police corner them on the rocky slope of a hill and open fire. After his brother is hit in the leg, Yussef returns fire, striking one police officer in the shoulder. The police continue shooting, eventually fatally wounding Yussef’s brother in the back. As his father rages with grief, Yussef eventually surrenders and confesses to all the crimes, begging clemency for his family and medical assistance for his brother. The police take him into custody. The family’s fate is unresolved.
The movie’s first plot is interspersed with scenes of Richard and Susan. They came on vacation in Morocco to get away from things and mend their own marital woes. The death of their infant third child to SIDS (this is the implied cause) has strained their marriage significantly as they struggle to communicate their frustration, guilt, and blame. It is also implied that Richard left the family for a while after the infant’s death. When Susan is shot on the tour bus, Richard orders the bus driver to the nearest village with a doctor. She receives some rudimentary treatment here, enough to save her life. The other tourists wait for some time, but they eventually demand to leave, fearing the heat and more attacks from the supposedly dangerous locals. Since Susan cannot travel by bus in her condition, the couple remains behind with the bus’s tour guide, Anwar, waiting transportation to a hospital (they’ve managed to contact the US embassy using the village’s only phone). Political issues between the US and Morocco prevent quick help, but a helicopter comes at last to carry them to the hospital. It is revealed that, after 5 days in the hospital, Susan recovers and is sent home.
Richard and Susan JonesSimultaneously, the movie tells the story of Chieko Wataya (Rinko Kikuchi), a rebellious, deaf Japanese teenage girl who refuses to speak, traumatized by the recent suicide of her mother and a sense that she is an outcast from society because of her handicap. She is bitter towards her father, Yasujiro Wataya (K
