Babylon Film Review

I’d been waiting to see Babylon for several months. Not that I knew that much about it but the advertising I had seen onscreen made me think this could be for me.

Additionally, Burlington Arcade in London where I visit several times a week with my tours has been decorated in a Babylon theme for a few months. I knew it was an epic film and set in the 1920’s or 1930’s and that was all I needed to know. I was hoping to feel some of the breathtaking spectacle of Going To The Cinema Alone…. Specifically For The Great Gatsby (2013 film) and in no way was I to be disappointed.

Babylon follows the career of Manny Torres, an aspiring filmmaker from Mexico who we first meet in the desert with an elephant on the way to a massive party and it is here that he  crosses paths with fellow aspiring starlet Nelly LaRoy at a bacchanalian party one night in 1920s Los Angeles. Other characters that are followed to various degrees are also introduced at the party including movie star Jack Conrad, cabaret performer Fay Zhu, tabloid journalist Elinor St. John, and musician Sidney Palmer. The film charts the progress of each of these as they rise and fall in their respective careers spanning the end of silent films and the beginning of sound productions and from time to time their paths cross each other too.

Babylon is an epic film in every where. I’ve never quite seen anything like it and for much of the film I was wondering whether it may in fact be the best film I have ever seen. It opens with a fantastically breathtaking and ravishingly debaucherous party sequence that captures the maddening spirit of roaring twenties Hollywood.

If cinema is to help you get away from your own life and be immersed in another then there is nothing quite to compared to this opening party in Babylon. It’s funny, it’s colourful, it’s outrageous. Various news and reviewers have slammed this party for being shocking and it is but that’s what I wanted to see. I’ve never been to a 1920’s Hollywood party in a millionaires mansion and I’d be disappointed if it was like any party I’ve ever been too.

The main characters in Babylon are fictional though one or two real figures are depicted or referenced. Babylon is just a beautiful film to look at, the cinematography is incredible. I’ve never seen Diego Calva before and it was just great watching Manny go from a general dogsbody character to a high-powered studio executive whose one weak spot is that of Nelly LaRoy.

Nelly LaRoy is ported by Margot Robbie’s a brash and troubled young lady from New Jersey who just wants to be a star. Several days after watching Babylon, I am still laughing at some of the lines from Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, not least her fantastic entrance into the film with her car that she manages to crash more than once in the opening segment. “Don’t worry about the car, it’s not mine!”As the film goes on though, things become more poignant for Nelly as like others in the film, she is looked down upon for who she is and simply the changing demands of becoming a talkie-star.

Brad Pitt I found wonderful in playing the drunken but kind hearted movie star who is ready to give Manny his lucky break and it is sad to see how his story plays out.

Babylon is deliberately brash and over the top and does a fine job of capturing the truly madcap epic spirits of early Hollywood. I really enjoyed some of the location shootings and the crazy things that were going on to make a successful film and later on when the film industry is codified and becomes more corporate it is easy to see things changing. In one memorable and lengthy scene Robbie’s character (along with the sound man) struggles, fails, is interrupted, and struggles again to perform a simple one-page scene. It is infuriating for all involved and the audience is just as willing and desperate for just one time for it to go smoothly. It does highlight just how vastly different and difficult it must have been for people to go from the old ways of film making to the new.

The pace of the film does slow a little as we progress which for those of us that use asthma inhalers was not altogether unwelcome but towards the end is another utterly bonkers sequence when Manny Torres goes with a colleague to pay off a gambling debt that Nelly LaRoy has accrued. He encounters a freaky head honcho in the criminal underworld played by Tobet Maguire who ends up taking him into an underground journey into hell. Rather like Dante’s Inferno, every level they go just gets more freakish and ghoulish and we’re all to aware that at any moment everything is likely to go wrong which of course at a period of peak tension it does.

The film has been described by its creator as a hate letter to Hollywood and a love letter to movies and by the end of the film we’re in no doubt just how those that work and star there can be spat out like yesterdays news for as long as new bright eyed young people arrive on the scene.

It finishes with a scene which I thought almost 2001-esque in mind-blowing moments which I know other people thought to be either nonsense or sheer rubbish. The reviewer for the Independent wrote with a passion about how bad it is before finishing a tirade that mentioned how the film creator might have wanted it to be perceived. Well that’s how I perceived it and I thought it was wonderful.

At 3 hours 8 minutes or so in length, even the duration is not for everyone but I’m all for lengthy films that allow you to get engrossed in the story.

Most of the critics had nothing but harsh words for Babylon and it’s pretty much flopped in the USA but personally speaking, I loved it with a passion and also it has a banging soundtrack to boot.