TOWERING `BABEL' A BEAUTIFULLY BUILT MOVIE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

`Babel'' swept me up, up, up and carried me away.

The latest multistory examination of the state of mankind directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga, the film may be a bit pretentious and facile in parts. But acknowledging that doesn't make it any less moving or profound. Even better than they managed to with ``Amores Perros'' and ``21 Grams,'' the Mexican filmmakers come to grips with grief, intimate resentment and our universal failure to communicate. Yet also, amid loads of their trademark downbeat tragedy, Gonzalez Inarritu and Arriaga find more glimmers of hope than they previously have. Working on a worldwide scale, while concentrating on the cultural differences and political borders that separate people, they locate the things that unite us all as well.

But that's only part of ``Babel's'' greatness. Always a daring stylist, Gonzalez Inarritu orchestrates the elements of cinema here like a true maestro. Along with superb performances, the film boasts career-best contributions from director of photography Rodrigo Prieto, score composer Gustavo Santaolalla and editor Stephen Mirrione, among others. But it's the way the director combines all of these elements into one glorious ode/fugue to diversity/brotherhood that brings on that sweeping effect.

The film shifts among four groups of people in Morocco, Japan and on both sides of the California-Mexico border. In the North African country, a devastated American couple, Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett), are trying to come to terms with the death of a child. The vacation isn't working. Then a shot rings out of nowhere, and the pair's priorities are swiftly reordered.

The bullet came from a hunting rifle newly acquired by a family of Berber herders. It was just the boys Yussef and Ahmed (Boubker Ait El Caid and Said Tarchani, neither of whom have acted before) fooling around. But Morocco being a Muslim country that depends on Western tourists, the authorities quite understandably go on terrorist alert.

Meanwhile, back in Southern California, the nanny of Richard and Susan's two surviving kids, Amelia (``Perros' '' Adriana Barraza), can't wait to return to Mexico for her son's wedding. When her babysitting relief fails to show up, though, Amelia makes the unwise decision to take little Debbie (Elle Fanning) and Mike (Nathan Gamble) across the border with her. A great time is had by all at the wild, colorful country reception. But getting back home is not so easy.

How these stories relate to the carnal yearnings of a deaf teenager in Tokyo remains a mystery until late in the film. Yet, even though her story only matches the life-or-death urgency of the others in a tertiary way (Chieko's mother recently committed suicide), Rinko Kikuchi plays her with a fierce intensity that may be the standout performance in a movie full of near-perfect ones. Not hearing-impaired herself, the actress learned Japanese sign language for the part. But it's her facial and body language that unforgettably express the girl's confusion, anger and desire with exquisite specificity and heartbreaking awkwardness.

The sound and visual designs of the Tokyo sequences are ``Babel's'' most complex; a disco scene is the greatest Wong Kar-wai moment the Hong Kong master never shot. But Gonzalez Inarritu and his collaborators bring equally, if very differently, surreal touches to the Saharan and Sonoran deserts, while keeping everything grounded in the most basic human conflicts, needs and emotions.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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BABEL - Four stars

(R: violence, nudity, language, children in jeopardy, racism)

Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza, Gael Garcia Bernal, Rinko Kikuchi, Koji Yakusho, Boubker Ait El Caid, Said Tarchani.

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

Running time: 2 hr. 23 min.

Playing: ArcLight, Hollywood; AMC Century 15, Century City; The Grove, Farmers Market; Broadway 4, Santa Monica.

In a nutshell: Big names and talent contribute to moving examination of human condition through interrelated stories. In English and English-subtitled Spanish, Japanese, Berber and Arabic.