Oh, I am glad that movie season is upon us. This film got three stars but I thought it was better than that. The three story lines (American couple trying to patch up an ailing marriage, a deaf-mute Japanese girl trying to cope with a world of silence, and a pair of sheepherding Moroccan families trying to eke out a living) are played out internationally in Morocco, the US, Mexico, and Tokyo and the ways in which they intersect is not wholly apparent until the film'f final frames. Among the central themes is the difficulty of communicating even with those with whom we are most intimate, and the global complications that arise from that. When a wealthy Japanese businessman gives a Moroccan sheepherder a hunting rifle, his largesse merely underscores the economic disparities between 1st and 3rd world culture and shows how such "generosity" sets in motion a series of events that reverberate around the world. I would recommend this film but don't expect much in the way of light moments. Even the music is spare.

The landscapes--the Moroccan desert (ironically echoed late in the film in the American Southwestern desert), the crowded streets of Tokyo, a Mexican wedding fiesta in a small village--each of these spaces is almost like another character in the film. Inarittu (sp?) not only defines these spaces brilliantly but also shows how they define the people within them.

Brad Pitt is excellent and I've heard some folks talking about an Oscar, though my money is still on Leo DiCaprio in The Departed. But that does not detract from a stellar performance from Pitt, who reveals once again that he is not just a pretty face.