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Meanwhile, back home, Robert and Susan's children have stumbled into a different sort of trouble. Amelia (Adriana Barraza), an illegal immigrant working as their nanny, needs to get back to Mexico for her son's wedding. When Richard calls and demands that she stay with his children, she faces a tough choice. Obey? Abandon them to someone else's care? Or take them south of the border for a while?

Adriana Barraza as Amelia, the Jones' housekeeper

"Mom says that Mexico is really dangerous," says the boy. And sure enough, they find themselves in a life-threatening debacle, thanks to the reckless foolishness of a self-absorbed young man (The Science of Sleep's Gael Garcia Bernal).

But wait—there's yet another story to tell, one with a mysterious connection to that gunshot.

Taking us to Tokyo, Iñárritu tells the story of a deaf-mute teenager, Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi). Catching the glances of boys their own age, Chieko and her disabled friends commiserate: "They look at us like we're monsters."

Chieko's desperate loneliness becomes the film's most powerful picture of the human condition. Broken and desperate for a meaningful relationship, she resorts to dangerous games. And it's hard to blame her. She's embracing a pop culture lie—that exploiting her own sexuality is the best way to get attention. The result is heartbreaking to behold.

Where is God in all of this? The question doesn't even occur to most of these characters. While we glimpse some Christian symbols on the edges of these stories, these seem to be little more than cultural decorations. When a Muslim man bows to pray, the Westerner looking on seems bewildered, as if surprised to find that people in this world still sometimes pray.

Iñárritu's film is not the first movie about alienation to use this metaphor. Michael Haneke's masterful international drama Code Unknown opened and closed with scenes in which deaf children struggle to interpret each other's gestures in a game of charades. Similarly challenging, Haneke's film was more subtle and artful. Iñárritu gives a team of Oscar-caliber talent—cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, production designer Brigitte Broch, editor Stephen Mirrione, and composer Gustavo Santolalla—room to shine. And yet, by comparison, his film seems heavy-handed.

Babel's biggest problem is that when Iñárritu and Arriaga collaborate, the results are almost always dispiritingly morbid. Babel is Arriaga's finest script yet (he also wrote Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada). But, like Amores Perros and 21 Grams, the film feels like a 21-car pile-up of catastrophes.

Iñárritu's depiction of Chieko's disintegration is the film's second dismaying misstep. Chieko, starved for intimacy, strips naked to get attention. But Arriaga should have employed the camera more creatively to preserve the actress's dignity. These scenes are not pornographic—Chieko's nakedness is meant to emphasize her desperation and vulnerability. And yet, such full exposure to the camera tends to distract viewers from the story and get them thinking about the audacity of the actress and filmmakers. Worse, we live in an age when reckless opportunists will clip and exploit any images they can to make money off of the sexual appetites of misguided Internet customers. And thus, while nudity can be an appropriate element in art, these scenes may do more harm than good.

Rinko Kikuchi as Chieko, a deaf-mute teen who resorts to dangerous games

In spite of this misstep, Iñárritu and Arriaga lets Chieko deliver Babel's poignant closing moments, as we watch two characters reach a silent understanding.

If Americans do make Babel a success, that's probably due to the participation of its A-list stars, Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Films about foreign cultures are normally neglected by American moviegoers, and rarely register at the box office. Thus, the best movies of the year often pass unnoticed due to their lack of celebrity glamour. (How many have seen, or rented, L'Enfant or Sophie Scholl this year?) Perhaps the participation of Pitt and Blanchett will help Babel open up a wider world of fantastic filmmaking for moviegoers.

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