Babel didn’t win the Academy Award for Best Film but in a way it’s work was done. The director Alejandro González Iñárritu was quoted talking about how he started out to make a film about how language and culture keeps people separate but ended up making a film about how connected everyone is in the end.

Watching the Oscars, for the first time, you could really sense the Babel of the world right there at the Staples Center. And it wasn’t just in the Foreign Language Film category. I don’t know I’ve ever heard so many languages and so many accents right there on the stage. From Ruby Yang’s “xie xie” after picking up the award for the The Blood of Yinzhou, to Ennio Morricone’s entire acceptance speech in Italian to the Spanish accents of the winners for Pan’s Labyrinth – it was a real linguistic spectrum. And the only linguistic stumble really came from Clint Eastwood calling composer Morricone “a scorer.”

When a winner thanks their family, all those who are named are thrilled. But I bet when Ruby Yang said “xie xie” thousands of Chinese watching the telecast clapped. My friends and I were hoping if Deepa Mehta won for Water she’d said a few words in Hindi or Punjabi.

She didn’t win but the melting pot was really on full boil. Mehta was nominated for a Hindi film (Water) which was actually the Canadian entry – the first time that had happened. It was amazing to hear Hollywood go global. Ang Lee had already pushed that door open when he directed and won the Oscar last year for a story as American as Brokeback Mountain. Alfonso Cuarón walked right through that door when he directed the nothing-to-do-with-Mexico Children of Men. This year only one of the five Best Actress nominees was American and Clint Eastwood was nominated for a Japanese film.

Maybe next year the Oscars will finally dispense with that Best Foreign Language film. (And maybe include figures from world cinema in their remembrance line up but then the ceremony might last 5 hours.)