My comments on 'Babel'

Sound
What I found interesting about the sound in this film was the choice of when music was used. A lot of the music was quite cultural to the different locations, such as the solo acoustic guitar for the scenes in Morocco, the poppy-techno sounds when in Japan and the full band set-up at the wedding in Mexico playing exotic, high-tempo music. There was a mixture of digetic and non-digetic sound. Examples of digetic includes car radio, TV, live band ect. while non-digetic sound involved the overlapping soundtrack of the styles of music that I mentioned above. Another striking moment in terms of sound for me was when the helicopter arrived to rescue the American couple - the soundtrack took over in terms of volume, so whilst the helicopter blades could be seen spinning, they could not be heard, until they lightly started to fade towards the end of the scene.

Cinematography
Throughout the film, I noticed that nearly all of the shots, if not all of them, were hand-held, with no fixed support for the camera. This could be seen by the shakiness of the screen in almost every scene. None the less, there were still an excellent range of shots, from the shot/reverse shot of the American couple at the dinner table, the opening tracking shot and the extremely powerful point-of-view shot from the deaf-mute Japanese girl (in the nightclub, we can tell it's her as the sound suddenly disappears).

Editing
I liked the fact that the editing was used to control the four separate narratives and ultimately bring them together to form the full plot. This was displayed by the sudden cuts to new locations, and further supported by what was going on in the current scene e.g. the Japaneses news show informing viewers of the injured American in Morocco. Eyeline action also took place many times, my favorite points being when the Japanese girl looked over to the boys sat on the table across the room and the Moroccan boys looking down from the mountain to the bus.

Mise-on-scene
As well as the music, costume was also kept quite cultural to each character's nationality. For example, the American middle-class couple with jeans and shirts, the rich Japanese businessman constantly appearing in a suit and the Moroccans dressed in robes ect. Lighting was quite natural throughout, with daytime and night time shots both using natural lighting sources. Dim light was used well in the Moroccan village as it would most likely be dim in those sort of huts, while bright lights re-created the Japanese club scene well. One of the most notable props had to be the rifle because it linked each narrative together, as the did the editing.

What I thought
I liked the fact the music was kept quite cultural to each location and how that all four separate narratives were linked together by the rifle as, to me, it shows how effective props can be in a film. The point-of-view shot from the Japanese deaf-mute girl also proved to be very powerful, showing what its like to experience an action-packed, loud nightclub with no hearing. The multi-narrative element also reminded me somewhat of the film 'Elephant' but with more of a cultural impact. This is defiantly a film that I would recommend to other people.