Babylon (Damien Chazelle, 2023)

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John-Connor's Avatar
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02-03-23
Originally Posted by John-Connor
BABYLON 2022 Damien Chazelle

3h 9m | Comedy | Drama | History
Writer: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Flea, Jovan Adepo, Olivia Wilde, Eric Roberts

Didn't like most of the hair and makeup. The exaggeration of debauchery was slightly over the top for my taste. The final scene was very Cinema Paradiso. Everything else I truly enjoyed, especially the scene with Jean Smart and Brad Pitt and the music was fire.

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02-03-23
Originally Posted by KeyserCorleone
So some people are calling out Babylon as being woke since...

WARNING: spoilers below
Two white main characters die at the end and the colored people are "better people." And there's a lesbian.


I think this is kinda bullshit. And why?

WARNING: spoilers below
These two colored people were willingly part of these horrific scenes, playing at these parties and providing the entertainment. These two colored people has front-row seats to the worst show Hollywood had to offer and they still wanted a piece of it.
OK, so our jazz player got insulted about a skin-color issue at the LAST HALF HOUR (not including credits). But that was literally because Manny, the Spaniard, told him to.
The SPANIARD told him to wear blackface to make himself look more black. I don't remember Jack or Nelly doing anything even remotely racial. Jack just wanted to be in hit movies again, and Nelly was a naive young adult who made stupid choices. All there is to it.


OK, maybe I'll give you the lesbian. MAYBE. But there's a difference between a truly woke movie and, as Jeff Bridges in Iron Man would put it, "shutting the hippies up." This kinda reeked of the latter. Besides, she was hardly a moral compass herself...

WARNING: spoilers below
singing about pussy at an orgy.


The movie was literally saying that everyone involved in the business is sinful.

And on the subject of multi-racial casting, you don't have to be woke to do that. My proof lies in the reason David Yost left the multi-racial central Power Rangers a couple years after inception: wokes wouldn't even mock a man for being gay in the 90's, but that's exactly what he got from the cast and crew.

Just sayin', there are way more "woke" things than Babylon. And it takes more than a multi-racial cast.
WARNING: "Babylon" spoilers below
Wasn't the whole point that Fay and Sidney were meant to be examples of talented queer people and/or people of colour who got railroaded out of the industry as a result of the rise of social mores rooted in regressive ideas of morality and aesthetics? I can definitely understand a black person being so offended at the prospect of being told to wear blackface, especially when the only reason he's told to do it is to appease racist audiences who don't want to see desegregated musical acts. The fact that a Hispanic man tells him to do that is immaterial since Manny's story is itself one rooted in being a model minority and working to assimilate himself into the studio system down to going by a nickname that doesn't emphasise his own ethnic background.


Anyway, disregard anyone who unironically complains about movies being "woke", most of the time they're just mad that a piece of media dares to have minorities in it at all rather than because they have any legitimate criticisms.

Originally Posted by Siddon
The only issue I had with the film was the Jazz Player that was 100% an anachronism. No way would a black man in the 1920's act like that. The guy is a generation removed from slavery and he's given this wealth and he leaves it behind because he has to polish up his face. That's absurd he's already a star so the notion of him needing be "darker" is dumb and the actor isn't light skinned.


It's also difficult because the character doesn't have the same flaws as the other people in the film. It's just the same bland character we see in every film. If Chazelle was honest the guy would have likely been on heroin or morphine but we can't have realistic accurate characters so we get that BS scene.
WARNING: "Babylon" spoilers below
"No way"? It seems plausible enough that someone might ditch the film industry entirely if he feels so utterly disrespected and manipulated regardless of how well it paid, especially since he knows that he's being made to appeal to racists (and his final appearance would indicate that he's getting back to playing music for its own sake rather than struggling to break into the industry that he realises). Maybe someone else gets into drugs or whatever but that's not a guarantee either.
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04-07-23
Saw this for the third time last night. It gets better and goes by faster each time. Granted, this time actually was faster, since I cut almost twenty minutes to make it more palatable for my mom.


(She liked it too.)



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04-09-23
Originally Posted by LAMb EELYAK
I cut almost twenty minutes to make it more palatable for my mom.
The infamous Mom Cut! Some films get really short that way. For one, Nekromantik is only 15 minutes long!
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06-10-23
Originally Posted by Iroquois
WARNING: "Babylon" spoilers below
Wasn't the whole point that Fay and Sidney were meant to be examples of talented queer people and/or people of colour who got railroaded out of the industry as a result of the rise of social mores rooted in regressive ideas of morality and aesthetics? I can definitely understand a black person being so offended at the prospect of being told to wear blackface, especially when the only reason he's told to do it is to appease racist audiences who don't want to see desegregated musical acts. The fact that a Hispanic man tells him to do that is immaterial since Manny's story is itself one rooted in being a model minority and working to assimilate himself into the studio system down to going by a nickname that doesn't emphasise his own ethnic background.


Anyway, disregard anyone who unironically complains about movies being "woke", most of the time they're just mad that a piece of media dares to have minorities in it at all rather than because they have any legitimate criticisms.



WARNING: "Babylon" spoilers below
"No way"? It seems plausible enough that someone might ditch the film industry entirely if he feels so utterly disrespected and manipulated regardless of how well it paid, especially since he knows that he's being made to appeal to racists (and his final appearance would indicate that he's getting back to playing music for its own sake rather than struggling to break into the industry that he realises). Maybe someone else gets into drugs or whatever but that's not a guarantee either.
Yeah who gives a sh*t if somebody calls it "woke"? Conservatives have been whining about "liberal hollywood" my whole life. Woke is just the new stupid buzz word they use.

With that said, Babylon was a boring disjointed film and a slog to get there.



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06-10-23
Every time I think about this movie, I see the excess vulgarity and modern political habits as a way of comparing past Hollywood with modern Hollywood, as if it's telling us our politics won't matter 50 years from now when Hollywood changes, but without directly saying anything.



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09-13-23
Actually can’t believe I got through this 3 hours movie in one sitting.

It’s a very noisy movie. Robbie is very good as is the lead actor from Mexico whose name I’ve forgotten.

Would never want to see it again.
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