Babel

Corrected entry: When the police first show up to the original rifle owner's house and talk to his daughter at the elevator, how did they even know who owned the rifle at that early stage? The police at the crime scene had not even found the empty cartridges yet. Also they had not even questioned the original (guide) receiver of the rifle as yet. Then to make things worse, in the very next scene of the girl watching TV the text says "In the shooting of an American tourist, suspects have been taken into custody" and shows a picture of the Moroccan boy and father, not even identified or known at that stage. (00:45:00 - 00:46:50)

Correction: The movie is not in chronological order. Each story runs on its own separate continuity.

Corrected entry: The shooting of Cate Blanchett is worse than the 'Magic Bullet' that killed Kennedy. She is facing the front of the bus, leaning her head against the window to her left. The bullet hole appears in the window next to her (where it probably wouldn't have even hit her) and the bullet supposedly went through her left shoulder from front to back. Impossible with the bullet exiting the window beside her.

Joel Amos Gordon

Correction: Actually the boy is shooting from above the bus and in front to the right of the way the bus is facing. So how could the bullet possibly have come through the left side window?

Correction: Actually if you look at the shot of the kid shooting the bus you can see that Cate is actually shot through the window. It enters through the glass, then into Cate's shoulder.

Corrected entry: When the Japanese girl flashes her crotch at the boys in the cafeteria, it's almost shaven. But when she appears fully nude later the same day, her pubic area is rather bushy.

Correction: She is far from shaved in the cafeteria scene. Her line in the bathroom about "meeting the real hairy monster" wouldn't make much sense either if she was.

Andreas[DK]

Corrected entry: When the Japanese girl writes the final note to the detective (the one she puts in her pocket) she was writing for maybe 15 seconds. When the detective looks at the paper later on it's covered with small print. There's no way she could have written so much in so short a time.

Joel Amos Gordon

Correction: First, the camera may not be showing all the time she was writing. Second, it takes no longer to write Japanese characters than writing in English, so, yes, she could have written so much in such a short time.

Corrected entry: The boys in the desert shoot at the tour bus from its right side, but when Cate Blanchett gets hit by the bullet, it comes through the left-side window she's resting against.

Correction: It could have been a ricochet from one of the hundreds of rocks and boulders lining the road.

Continuity mistake: When the nanny is walking in the desert, she falls down. However, when she is on the ground, she is wearing shoes completely different than the ones she had been wearing the shot before.

Dandude

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Richard: This is your fucked-up country, it's your responsibility.

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Question: At the hospital, Brad Pitt calls home and speaks to the caretaker. I thought she was already deported to Mexico. He tells her someone is coming to relieve her and she will be free to go to the wedding. I don't get the timeline here.

Answer: The scenes are out of chronological order - Richard called Rachel, Susan's sister, to tell her Susan has been shot. He calls Amelia, the nanny, who already knows about the shooting from Rachel, and tells her that Rachel will find someone to mind the kids. He rings later and tells her to cancel the wedding as they are still in Morocco and Rachel could not find a replacement. All this takes place before she takes the kids to Mexico and is deported.

Sierra1

So did Amelia go Mexico or was that just a dream, because Brad never finds out about that and the kids missing along with Amelia?

Everything happens, but in different times. When you see Brad Pitt on the phone, that is the phone call the nanny was receiving in the beginning of the movie, before she got ready for the wedding.

Answer: At the start there are 2 phone calls from Richard to Amelia (the nanny). The first call is him saying Rachel is on her way to relieve her, Susan is in surgery and please don't tell the kids what's happened. This is the same call from the very end of the movie where he is in the hospital and Susan is in surgery. Not long after we see the first call, we see Amelia receive a second phone call from Richard, saying "Rachel can't get there, we need you to stay the night." Amelia protests saying "but it's my sons wedding" and Richard says "I will pay for him to have another wedding, we are relying on you we need you to stay" and hangs up. This view of Amelia's timeline from the start of the film, before she takes the kids to Mexico and everything unfolds for her in the desert, is happening AFTER everything we see from Richard's perspective. Whilst it jumps around between characters, it is clear that each character's timeline is chronological to itself, and does ACTUALLY happen.

Answer: At the end Pitt is talking on the phone to his kids, which you saw from the kids' perspective at the start of the movie, then after that the nanny takes them to the wedding. So the wedding and aftermath is happening while Pitt and wife are in hospital in Morocco. Hope it helps.

I still don't understand if Amelia was deported or not. Like someone already said, Brad told her someone would be there soon.

Yes...the terrible treatment of the border agent suggested that she'd immediately be deported...yet, during the phone call with the American father we hear both Amelia and the two kids...such suggests that-for now, alt least-she's still in the States.

Answer: I think the message at the beginning is different as he has no-one to care for the kids. In the replay at the end he says Rachel will sort out the kids. I need to listen more closely to the two messages - the were both mumbled like actors in US movies seem to do, annoyingly. I feel that the film is showing what could have happened to the kids.

I've put a complete answer attached to the main thread for you. But no it's not showing what could've happened, it's showing what did happen. The call brad Pitt makes at the end of the film is the very first call we see Amelia get at the start. Then a bit later she gets another call saying "Rachel can't get there" and then the Mexico part of the timeline unfolds. Chronologically this happens after the final scene with brad Pitt at the end of the film in the hospital.

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