Babylon - A Quite Interesting but Slightly Dark Take on the Transition of Silent to Sound Films in Hollywood

I said in my previous post that a new movie was released on last Friday but I decided to postpone seeing till weekend since it was > 3 hours long. And after finishing plenty of activities in the whole morning to afternoon, I finally saw this in the evening by myself. I did not encourage my wife to see it with me as I was not sure she would have liked it. So let's get to the movie now.

Brief Story Line

Set in the mid 1920s when silent movies were in their prime in the film industry, Manny (Diego Calva - I Promised You Anarchy, Narcos: Mexico TV series etc) was working as the runaround man for Kinescope studio, Hollywood. During one of the party in the executive's house, Manny met for the first time and was attracted to a woman named Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie - Amsterdam, Focus etc) who was thriving to become a major star. After this party, Manny drove home the famous actor Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt - Bullet Train, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood etc) who was drunk and became his trusted aid ever since.

While Manny started to rise in rank, Nellie also rose to stardom with her first performance in a movie. However, when sound films began to be introduced to the public, everything changed to the lives of these three people.

So what would happen to them all? You could find them in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

To be honest, I was very skeptical with this movie as I did not have idea on what it was about. Plus the trailer did not seem to show anything other than it was full of parties and the making of films in Hollywood during the 1920s. And for the first 20 minutes or so, the opening scene did not exactly lift my doubt if I was going to enjoy it. However, as the story progressed, especially when I realized that the story was focusing on the 3 lead cast and the changes in the film industry, I was beginning to enjoy it better.

During the party scene, we were shown the extravagance which likely was quite common back then. We were also introduced with other characters like the popular lesbian cabaret singer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li - Wu Assassins TV series, Quantico TV series etc) and Sydney Palmer (Jovan Adepo - Overlord, Jack Ryan TV series etc) the brilliant jazz band member who played trumpet. In addition to those, the movie was filled with an ensemble cast that included Jean Smart (A Simple Favor, Mare of Easttown series etc) as the editor for gossip magazine Elinor St. John, Max Minghella (Spiral, The Social Network etc) as producer Irving Thalberg and many more, even Tobey Maguire who also served as executive producer. After reading more on the movie, it did not seem that the major characters were based on real life people except few minor support characters.  

There were some scenes in here that I really enjoyed, like the spectacular making of war scene in the earlier part, or that amusing take of a scene when they started to use sound effect. Meanwhile the rest were focusing on Manny, Nellie and Jack which to me was pretty interesting. There was one dialogue scene between Jack and Elinor regarding her column that I thought was beautifully written. But as enjoyable as those scenes were, I still felt 3 hours was too long, particularly when there were parts that I thought were not really required and could have shortened the duration. Btw, I noticed that in Indonesian cinemas, the duration was 187 minutes compared to the official info of 189 minutes. So there were around 2 minutes that were cut (most I think was done in that party scene).

This movie was written and directed by Damien Chazelle (First Man, La La Land etc) but it did not look like his directing was getting the best of praise. In fact critics were quite divisive on the movie. However, it did got the recognition on other aspects like the acting, production value, costumes (amazing to my opinion), score etc and was nominated in Golden Globe, Academy Awards and other accolades. I also enjoyed the performance of the lead cast and some of the humor, but I could not help feel that it was a bit too dark. There was a strong sense that the ending would be something like what I thought would be, although it did give me a better appreciation of what happened during that transition period.

Overall to me this was a movie that was amazing in certain areas like the acting, the humor, the showing of how to produce a movie at the time and the story of the 3 main characters. But its rather detailed focus on showing the extravagant parties, the dark tone in some parts and the length of the movie did not really work for me personally. I understand the film was also a box office bomb despite receiving those award nominations. So if you do not mind spending 3 hours in the cinema to see the transition from silent to sound films and its impact on the people in the industry during mid 1920s to 1930s, then you should give this one a try. But if you are not the type who would be enjoying this kind of movie, I think it would be better to skip it or wait for it to be available streaming soon.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars