Brad Pitt - Information

Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael García Bernal, Köji Yakusho, Adriana Barraza, Rinko Kikuchi, Nathan Gamble and Elle Fanning

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Writer: Guillermo Arriaga

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Babel consists of multiple stories taking place in the United States, Morocco, Mexico and Japan with four interrelated sets of situations and characters. It reveales complex and tragic stories that show us how alike we really are even though we live in different parts of the world. The stories combined provide a powerful story that affects the viewers and leaves them thinking.

All four stories are connected by a single rifle, all converge at the end and reveal a complex and tragic story of the lives of humanity around the world. In the beginning of the story a Moroccan Arab sells a rifle to a goat herdsman, who intends to use it to protect his herd of goats against jackals attack. Unfortunately that rifle brings nothing but misery to the herdsman and his family.

Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) a troubled married couple from San Diego, California, are on a vacation in Morocco, trying to work out their differences. A tragedy strikes when Susan is accidentally shot on a bus tour. The disaster thus multiplies, with the situation in Morocco ascribed to terrorists in the media.

Brad Pitt with Cate Blanchett in the movie Babel

Meanwhile in Tokyo, Japan, a deaf teenage girl is dealing with the death of her mother, rejection, the emotional distance of her father and her own self-consciousness. Then, on the opposite side of the world the married couple’s Mexican long-time nanny are going to her sons‘s wedding in Mexico and takes the couple’s two children with her only to come into trouble on the return trip.

Babel is directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga, starring an ensemble cast. This multi-narrative drama completes González Iñárritu’s Death Trilogy, which also consists of Amores perros and 21 Grams.

Babel won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and two nominations for Best Supporting Actress and won one for Best Original Score.

View the trailer

Scenes from the movie

A scene in which the deaf Japanese girls take Ecstasy

The nanny and the two children go to her son‘s wedding in Mexico

Behind the scenes of the film

Nathan Gamble and Elle Fanning

Interviews

A short interview with Brad Pitt at the premiere of “Babel

Interview with actor Gael Garcia Bernal and director Alejandro González Iñárritu
about the film

Trivia provided by The Internet Movie Database:

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• Rinko Kikuchi went through a year-long audition process before finally gaining the role of Chieko.
• Boubker Ait El Caid was cast as Yussef, the young Moroccan boy who mishandles the rifle, after director Alejandro González Iñárritu saw him playing soccer in the local town plaza.
• Brad Pitt gave up one of the starring roles in The Departed (2006) (a film he co-produced) in order to participate in this film, as he’s a longtime fan of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s films.
• Since each story was filmed at different times and on different continents, some of the cast members never met their counterparts until the film’s premiere.
• Actress Adriana Barraza gained 35 pounds for her role as Amelia.
• Actress Adriana Barraza, in real life, has had a long history of heart problems including two minor heart attacks. Despite this, she still insisted on carrying co-star Elle Fanning around in the desert for the two days of filming of Amelia walking in the desert with Mike and Debbie.
• 17 days before shooting was to commence in Morocco, none of the characters had been cast. The production crew made an announcement in the nearest town via television and radio and in the mosques that actors were needed. Within the next 24 hours, over 200 people showed up hoping to participate. Almost all of them are in the final cut of the film, both as principal characters and as extras.
• The scene where Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) and her father are in the car together was shot without filming permission from the city due to slow Japanese bureaucratic procedures. The crew created “man-made” busy traffic, and began shooting the scene. Later the police started chasing them while still shooting the scene.
• Only Richard and Susan’s segment was shot on 16 mm film; the rest of the movie was shot on 35 mm. In the scene where the helicopter finally arrives at the village, there is a slight pause as the 35 mm format kicks in.
• The color red is prominently seen in all four segments of the film. For example, Yussef, the Moroccan boy who accidentally shoots Susan, wears a red jacket that says “Morocco” on the back, while Amelia wears an elaborate red dress, causing her to stand out; Chieko frequently uses a red pen to write notes to people who can’t understand sign language, and the seats on Richard and Susan’s bus are red.
• Director of Photography Rodrigo Prieto encountered a problem while filming a track shot where Richard and the villagers carry the wounded Susan to the top of a steep hill: he tried running backwards to get the shot, but each time he tripped, often falling. However, Director Alejandro González Iñárritu ruled out using a Steadicam and insisted on hand-held camera work. Finally, Key Grip Joseph Dianda came up with a solution: Prieto filmed the shot while seated in a hotel chair carried by four grips. The resulting footage became known to crew members as “The Joey Chair Shot”.
• The shallow depth of field in Chieko’s sequences is a nod to the photography of Mona Kuhn. Most of Kuhn’s photos have shallow focus, a concept used by the filmmakers to emphasize Chieko’s deafness and isolation.
• Almost all of the film, even the driving scenes, was shot using a hand-held camera.