Babel:  I've just staggered out of a 10:30 PM screening of the latest film from Alejandro González Iñárritu , and part of me wants to just pack it in and go home because there's no way I'll see a better film at this film festival.  I probably won't see a better film this year.  All I know is that it's now 1:00 AM, and Babel made me so wired and so emotional, there isn't a chance I'll be able to get to sleep.

Like the other two pictures in Iñárritu's trilogy (21 Grams and Amores Perros), Babel was penned by Guillermo Arriaga, and if you're familiar with his work, you'll know arriving on time, paying attention, and concentrating on sorting out the narrative threads that are never shown to you chronologically will be crucial.  It doesn't take too long to nail down a few of those threads, even though they take place over several continents, and a handful of languages.  There's the family of Moroccan goat herders who acquire a rifle to keep jackals from eating their flock.  There's the Mexican au pair, who decides to take her two young and painfully white wards from their comfy San Diego digs to her son's wedding across the border.  There's American couple who experience a shocking tragedy while aboard a tour bus in the middle of nowhere.  Those aren't too difficult to connect to each other, but you're going to have to wait a while to see how Story Number Five -- about a sexually curious deaf-mute Japanese teenager whose father may have somehow been involved in the death of her mother -- fits into the big picture.

The film, whose title is a reference to the Tower of Babel, is a wonder across the board.  The acting is first-rate, as is the technical package which reunites Iñárritu and Arriaga (he won Best Screenplay at Cannes last year with The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) with their hugely talented 21 Grams supporting cast of Stephen Mirrione (editing -- he won the Technical Grand Prize at Cannes), Gustavo Santaolalla (score -- he won an Oscar for Brokeback Mountain), and Rodrigo Prieto (cinematography -- he should have won an Oscar for Brokeback, but was only nominated).  The sound alone is a wonder, jarringly jumping between near silence to ear-shattering to Santaolalla's guitar playing, which seems to fit like a glove no matter what country/language it's supporting.

Babel also landed Iñárritu the Best Director award at Cannes (as well as a lesser jury award), which makes me wonder what kind of awesome anti-British crack the Grand Jury was smoking last May (The Wind That Shakes the Barley was the out-of-left-field winner of the Golden Palm).