‘Babel’ aims to foster the language of unity

CANNES, France — Brad Pitt didn’t show for the news conference here Tuesday with director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, actress Cate Blanchett and other cast members of “Babel,” but everyone understood why.

Pitt sent word to the Cannes Film Festival that because of Angelina Jolie’s pregnancy and the “imminent arrival of the newest addition of our family” he was unable to join them in introducing the film but added that he was “tremendously proud” of it.

“Babel” features an ensemble cast on three continents, weaving stories about two Moroccan boys who accidentally shoot an American tourist, a nanny illegally crossing into Mexico with two American children, and a Japanese teen rebel whose father is sought by police in Tokyo.

Inarritu (“21 Grams,” “Amores Perros”) stitches together these seemingly disparate story lines into an emotional drama that features Pitt and Blanchett as Americans suddenly thrust into a life-threatening crisis in a remote Moroccan village when she is wounded after a bullet strikes their tour bus. The film also stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Koji Yakusho.

The film, which is in competition, is emerging as one of the most popular at the festival, receiving a lot of applause at an early-morning screening.

“ ‘Babel’ was a title I found a couple months before I started shooting,” Inarritu said, “and the Old Testament [account] about men building this tower and trying to arrive to the sky and be God. God gets angry and he creates these different languages.” But rather than languages that separate us, the director said he was concerned with the “preconceptions” that we have of one another that keep us apart.

Blanchett felt the film explored the connections between parents and children. “It felt very personal to me,” said the actress, who has young children of her own, especially the scenes with the nanny attempting to return to San Diego from her son’s wedding in Mexico. She becomes lost on foot in the desert with two small American children in her care.

Watching that drama unfold on screen, Blanchett said, was gut-wrenching. “I mean, it’s like pulling roots of my system out and displaying them on the ground in front of me.” Blanchett plays much of the movie wounded and stretched out on the floor of a dusty Moroccan hut as Pitt frantically tries to get the U.S. Embassy to send an ambulance.

“When I read the script, I asked Alejandro, ‘What am I going to do?’ ... [He said,] ‘It’s how the character fits into the whole .... ‘ “

For the scene in the hut, a prop guy held something foul smelling to attract blowflies, then put the flies on the actress’ “wound.”

What an actress must do for her career.