Movie Monster Babylon

by Alejandra Monerri Revuelta

It was the most uncomfortable 30 minutes of my life. The opening scene is a party set in the 1920s, with celebrities, all sorts of drugs, elephants, and lots of orgy sex. Context: After paying 16€, I never expected to be watching porn in a movie theatre full of strangers.

Babylon is a three-hour long movie. So long, that when I watched it in the cinema we had a little break in between. The frst half was about the magical, yet slightly problematic, world of silent flms. The upbeat, chaotic environment of flming; one scene features a true love’s kiss being flmed no further than 50 meters away from a great battle scene. The second half is about the transition from silent flms to ‘talkies’, and the efect that had on the world of cinema.

The flm mainly follows the story of flm director Manny. It starts and ends with him, but also explores the lives of the people he meets along the way. The movie highlights the dark side of cinema, which makes the fact that it was based on a true story especially unsettling.

Babylon’s own director described it as a “love letter to cinema, but hate mail to Hollywood.”

Manny frst meets Nellie LaRoy. The two seem to be polar opposites. He’s calm and collected. She’s crazy. But, like him, she has big dreams. Hers is to be an actress. And, post orgy-party, by some stroke of luck, she is given an opportunity and her career booms. Her story is the typical ‘dream becomes reality’, but also delves into what happens after a dream comes true. She starts to face problems; her voice being too loud or too quiet for the microphones, forgetting lines, or her New Jersey accent not being elegant enough. And, suddenly, she is not elegant enough. She’s not poised, she’s not educated or well-mannered. She doesn’t ft in.

Another character Manny encounters is Jack Conrad. His story starts at the peak of his career. However, he quickly discovers that his success in silent movies does not translate to the talkies. My favourite scene in the movie (yes, it tops the orgy!) is one in which