Went to see Babylon today and have quite a few thoughts bubbling up as a result - but I think I have to put them in this thread cos despite the discussion begun by
@Clinamenic in the other thread, I can't in good conscience recommend it with no reservations. That said, it passed the time enjoyably enough, although the first half filled with one-liners and amusing action (I loved the tension filled race to get the camera as he cranks the truck faster and fasrer, taking nail-biting risks as the scenery rushes by - and then a cut to the speedometer that shows him touching 40mph) was inevitably more fun than the inevitable downward trajectory of the second half.
I'm feeling slightly sick and possibly delirious after Pedro made us buy these horrible/delicious cheesey nachos which came with a pot of weird heated pseudo-cheese sauce. Luckily in Cinema World my bladder was spared by a seven minute interval crudely hacked out in the middle of the film, regardless of that moment happening to fall in the middle of a sentence.
Anyway got a load of things that occur to me straight away and which I'm gonna blurt out in no particular order; the main thing was the way that a lot of it felt second hand, partly cos the film was very similar to a number of other films AND cos it also contained scenes which seemed to refer to or pay homage to other films... so there were several bits that made you think they you had seen them before in several different ways.
The most obvious comparison is Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, a long and meandering love (and hate) letter to the cinema of yesteryear in which Brad Pitt played a stunt double to Dicaprio's washed up film star and Margot Robie had a brief involvement as film star Sharon Tate. In Babylon's long and meandering letter to Hollywood of a different yesteryear Brad Pitt has been promoted from stunt double to actual fading star and Robbie stays as a film star, albeit one with a lot more screen time.
The most derivative scene, or perhaps the one that was the most direct homage was when
MILD SPOILERS they try to scam a weird gangster by paying off some gambling debts with fake money. Almost exactly the same as in Boogie Nights when they make a similar plan to sell a load of fake coke to an equally bizarre gangster, in each case the strategy for fooling him is "He won't check it" - in both scenes the gangster is attended by an armed heavy and in both cases the tension is increased by the fact that annoying noises - in BN firecrackers being continually let off by the gangster's Chinese catamite, in Babylon the repeated snorting and spitting of phlegm by his bodyguard - keep breaking into the conversation as they stare guiltily at the bag of fake goods. It was this last bit that convinced me the similarity was deliberate
SPOILERS END
So that was one way in which the film felt... reminiscent of stuff you've seen before. Another bit was as "talkies" came in and you get the stars of silent pictures struggling to maintain their status, while this is happening you see a chorus miming to Singing In The Rain, which at the time seems like a slightly clever reference as, if you've seen that film, you will know that it is about precisely that, however, at the end, the link is spelled out for you as it's implied that the film Singing In The Rain is in fact based on some of the events that occur in this film.
Another is the journalist character. If you've ever seen
Hail, Caesar! you will know it is also set in Hollywood, but in the 1950s rather than 20s and 30s, and in that Tilda Swinton plays two roles "
In Hail,Caesar you had Tilda Swinton playing two roles - as both Thora Thacker and Thessaly Thacker, feuding identical twin sister gossip columnists, mimicking the rivalry between Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.
But in Babylon you have "
Jean Smart as Elinor St. John, a sensationalist journalist" which sort of feels as though they have taken the two characters who are already a switched up version of real people, and then combined them into one person and moved her/them back 20 something years. It's really confusing wondering what layer of reality we are dealing with.
Same goes for Lady Fay Zhu who at first I thought was clearly supposed to be Anna May Wong...
Zhu
Wong
But it seems like they just took her look and character cos Lady Zhu is not really an actress but more behind the scenes... and I dunno who inspired the German director (Fritz Lang? Otto Premininger?) - the basic point is that the film borrows, copies or pays homage to loads of films (those mentioned and also Myra Breckenridge and of course the montage at the end) and does the same with people to the extent that you don't know which are real or inspired in part by real people or nicked from films... you could write about just this for aaaages.
But I should of say, it's a fun film, the arc is deliberately predictable to the point where Brad Pitt's character does what is expected in these films although it really makes no sense for the plot. And this feels kinda knowingly done.
Less knowing however is the way it treats the third star it sort of covers, the black guy's story ironically feels like an afterthought and is just rushed and half-arsed.
Oh and the parties, I guess a common thing - see Great Gatsby for example - I'm sure the Hollywood parties looked crazy to the outside world, they were totally debauched with sex happening, maybe cocaine use and jazz! And if you were a Farner from Iowa or a clerk from Massachusetts that was impossibly and unimaginably out of reach. But all that is now pretty much available to normal people in the 21st century so filmmakers have a dilemma in depicting those parties, they have to sacrifice either realism or any kind of idea that they were shocking, here they opt for the former and give us bacchanalian orgies with hundreds of naked women, men being sodomised with champagne bottles, mountains of drugs and the occasional elephant which... well I dunno how true to life but it's more fun that way I suppose.
Anyway, what have I missed?
