Babel: Two-Disc Special Edition

Mexican director Iñárritu offers up this two-disc edition of his Academy Award-nominated masterpiece, and though it contains only one extra, it’s a feature-length "impression” of his experience making the globe-spanning film. Common Ground: Under Construction Notes, like Babel itself, is a beautiful and impressionistic look at the yearlong process of filming from Morocco to Mexico to Japan. From the beautiful people of Morocco - whose population filled the screen with non-actors that had no clue who co-stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett were - to the frustration of shooting in Japan, where authorities threatened to shut down the production at every turn, Common Ground is fascinating without getting geeky on the filmmaking details. The result is another meditation on the film’s themes: the connectedness of human experience, the search for truth in messy emotional moments and the joy of spontaneous creation. Largely concerning the shooting process (as opposed to the seemingly insane task of assembling the film’s disparate parts into a coherent whole), it will appeal to people interested in Iñárritu’s vision but won’t necessarily satisfy film geeks looking for a Scorsese-esque deconstruction of film lenses or influence.