Last night, I went with a few friends to Fordham's bootleg screening of Oscar nominee, "Babel." I came into it thinking that I had too much work to be sitting there, but that maybe its current events-y aura and Brad Pitt would make it a worthwhile two hours. I came out thinking that the movie had definitely surpassed my expectations. It transports you from desert and rocky landscapes in Morocco to the visually stunning city of Tokyo, and a rambunctious wedding in Mexico. These locations provide the stage for the struggles of an American tourist couple, a poor shepherding family, a caring nanny, and a deaf teenage girl. These vignettes are delicately woven together, showing the interconnectedness of a globalizing world, yet each "life situation" is so radically estranged from the other. These differences set up one of the major ideas of the film, that of miscommunication (referencing the biblical story of the Tower of Babel) and willful misunderstanding due to cultural, ethnic, and language barriers as well as those posed by personal disabilities. The continuity in the music also struck me. The guitar strings slowly plucked became the film's constant, melancholy symphony, giving voice to the characters' desperation. Babel contains unexpectedly poignant moments and examples of cooperation based on a shared sense of humanity, rather than nationality. It also confronts prevalent issues of immigration policy, adolescent sexual pressures, and Western mistrust of Islamic countries. This description may sound uncannily similar to last year's best picture, "Crash," with its themes of racial tensions and multiple storylines. However, Crash pales in comparison in my opinion. Babel more subtly presents the challenges each character faces and how he or she copes, without personal rants about their problems like those acted by Ludacris in Crash. It also puts its story within a wider, global framework. Anyways, there's my two thumbs up and wordy two cents worth. Babel gets my vote for an Oscar.