The Bible gives us the story of the tower of Babel, the magnificently tall structure whose height was deemed offensive and impertinent by God. To punish humanity for its architectural hubris, God then decided to drive a linguistic wedge between the nations of the world, who until then had spoken the same tongue. As fables go, this is a particularly effective one in that it both illustrates a moral -- don‘t think you‘re better than God or you shall be struck down with all speed -- and also provides a handy answer to those who wondered why there are so many different languages anyway.

In Babel, directed and co-written by Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros), a clutch of characters from a range of cultures and walks of life attempt to build a towering film of meaning from coincidence and portent; unfortunately, in the end it is the viewer who is punished for the filmmaker‘s hubris.

What is one even supposed to make of this film, where so many stories and moments seem to strain for larger import but end up only as fractured shards of disconnected drama? It is, after all, a film whose director had the good sense to cast Cate Blanchett, but the inexcusably bad taste to then give her a role in which she‘s required to spend the bulk of her screen-time unconscious or barely coherent. (It‘s sort of like getting Anthony Hopkins for your movie and then killing him off in the first 30 seconds.)

Blanchett plays Susan, a rich California tourist roaming around Morocco with her husband Richard (a pleasantly grizzled Brad Pitt). As their bus wends its way through the mountains, a pair of young shepherds are roaming above, testing a new rifle‘s accuracy with the abandon of immature brothers. The tragedy of unintended consequences: in a scene that‘s heartstopping for its matter-of-factness, a bullet smacks through the bus window, seriously wounding the sleeping Susan.

This accident ripples out through Babel‘s ramshackle quartet of stori