Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 2006

The Contenders:

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: Babel
Martin Scorsese: The Departed (winner)
Clint Eastwood: Letters from Iwo Jima
Stephen Frears: The Queen
Paul Greengrass: United 93

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 2006

The Contenders:
Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine (winner)
Pan’s Labyrinth
The Queen

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2006

The Contenders:
Babel
The Departed (winner)
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen

Interconnectivity

Film: Babel
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Babel is the type of film that defies being summarized. There’s too much going on in this film and too much that doesn’t make any sense for a large portion of the proceedings. This doesn’t mean I didn’t like Babel because that would not be accurate. It also doesn’t mean that I’m not going to try to come up with a summary anyway, because that’s just what I do.

Essentially, Babel is a series of interconnected stories that take place around the world, ranging from places as divergent as Japan, Mexico, the U.S., and Morocco. While there appears to be no connection between these stories initially, we learn as we see more and more that there is a specific chain of events that link all of these disparate elements together. A simple action in one place leads to inevitable consequences in another.