You can always take moral philosophy pass/fail.

Iñárritu should prob­a­bly find sub­tler ways to describe the exis­ten­tial links that bond soci­ety — Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft and all that — but Babel works in mys­te­ri­ous ways across bor­ders, lan­guage and time. In cer­tain respects, it’s a more dire expla­na­tion of David O. Rus­sel­l’s much maligned I Heart Huck­abees, which seemed prefer­able to me only because but­ter­fly effects are so roman­ti­cal­ly absurd. It’s in this way that Iñárritu’s lit­er­al attempts at con­nect­ed­ness would seem com­plete­ly art­less were it not for his cap­ti­vat­ing abil­i­ties as a film­mak­er and a breath­less storyteller.

Visu­al­ly, Babel accom­plish­es the work of sev­er­al film­mak­ers, past and present, draw­ing on the likes of Anto­nioni and Wong Kar-wai. Lin­ger­ing shots tell as much of the sto­ry as the actors do and the bleak vis­tas all mean the same thing whether you’re in the desert or the city.