FAQ for
Babel (2006) More at IMDbPro »

From Wikipedia

Within the film, the note's contents are never revealed. Part of it is momentarily visible to the viewer. The following is an approximate translation of the Japanese script beginning with the first line of the lower half of the notebook page, where "[EDGE]" indicates the end of that particular line on the notebook page:

. . . I wanted [EDGE] . . . myself [EDGE] . . . that's why [EDGE] . . . connected [EDGE] . . . that is [EDGE] . . . although I cannot [EDGE] . . . I have to find out [EDGE] . . . message from my mother [EDGE] . . . I was not sure if I was loved by my mother [EDGE] . . . but that's not the case . . . [EDGE] thank you.

The title refers to the story of the Tower of Babel in the Biblical Book of Genesis. In the story, the people of the world are all united and speak a common language. They begin to build a tower to reach the heavens and become godlike themselves. God, seeing this, decides to confuse the language of the people and destroy the tower. When the people could no longer understand each other they gave up work on the tower and spread out to different parts of the world. It also refers to the connections -or lack thereof- that come through the use of language. In each storyline the characters struggle with surviving and self-identification based on misunderstanding through a language barrier. This film ultimately looks at the fact that we are all intimately connected on a life-and-death level, yet the trivialities of langauge and misunderstandings break us apart.

English is spoken in about one-third of the film. Languages spoken throughout the film include Spanish, Arabic, French, Japanese, and an unspecified form of Sign Language, possibly Japanese Sign Language. Subtitles are used when English is not spoken and there is an option for deaf and hard of hearing viewers to turn on subtitles during the English-speaking portions.

Yasujiro (Kôji Yakusho) leaves his hunting rifle with the Moroccan guide he hired on his vacation. It's this rifle his sons use to shoot at the bus, injuring Susan Jones (Cate Blanchett). However, the shooting incident happened after Chieko's mother's suicide. If the hunting-trip itself was before or after her mother's death, we don't know.