The Best Picture nominees start to show up

Babel opens today. A couple of signs point to pretentiousness:

-A title that is never actually spoken in the film (see Syriana)
-Interlocking stories about strangers who appear to have nothing in common...but are actually are linked together by human tragedy (See Crash, 21 Grams, 13 Conversations About One Thing or good old Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey.)

Luckily, like some of those listed above, the movie delivers a little more than art house seriousness. And that's all thanks to the glorious directing of Alejandro Inarritu. The movie follows three tragedies in three parts of the world. Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt's tale of estranged Americans abroad gives the script a chance to bash American foreign policy and European tourists. Back in the U.S., Adriana Barraza's tale of a nanny getting caught in crosshairs of the INS gives the writer Guillermo Arriaga an opening to take easy shots at U.S. domestic policy. And in Japan, Rinko Kikuchi's tale of a lonely teenage girl doesn't fit in any politics; it just beats you down with the bleakness of her world.

But like I said before, the direction and acting are of such a high caliber that the movie doesn't feel as obvious, wooden and needlessly nihilistic as the script would be in the hands in the hands of someone less talented than Innarritu. He gives each story its own rhythm and look. He works wonderfully with his actors and they believably deliver clunkers of lines and make us buy the ridiculous situations into which Arriago backs his characters. When I left the theater, I felt spent from the emotion.