Babylon

These three characters continue running into each other throughout the years. We learn that Nellie is in a bad place. She’s unsophisticated, no one likes her voice, she’s wild at parties, she has a drug and gambling problem. Her career is on its deathbed. She needs help. And Manny loves her, so he helps her. He gets her an etiquette coach and voice coach, he gets her cast in movies and invited to the right parties. But she can’t do it. She is who she is. She’s a wild woman who drinks too much and fights rattle snakes. The plan backfires.

Nellie is like the Biblical Eve, she wants to experience everything and invites sin into her life. The image of Nellie and the snake evokes this passage from the Bible quite clearly.

Eventually, Nellie comes to Manny for help because she can’t pay a gambling debt. And he loves her, so he helps. But things go awry, and they decide to leave town. They’ll run away to Manny’s home country of Mexico. But Nellie doesn’t want to go. LA is her home. It’s where she belongs. She knows she’ll die if she stays and she’s ok with that. Manny finally confesses, “Te amo.” He says it a dozen times in his native language. She understands this time. She says she loves him too. There are some camera men nearby who recognize Nellie. They record their embrace, their declaration of love. It’s on film - it will last.

As they try to leave together, a hitman finds them, kills Nellie, and spares Manny, but tells him to get out of LA. And he does.

Elsewhere Jack Conrad is dealing with his own career decline, and his desire to be seen, to be appreciated and celebrated. It seems those times are over for him. LA has no place for him anymore. He decides he doesn’t want to live in that world. He dies too. For both Jack and Nellie, the parties were fun. The debauchery was an exciting bonus, but it was just a frill to the idea that you were part of something eternal, something that people would be able to connect with a hundred years in the future. Without that, what’s the point of living?

Just like in the real Babylon, when the people become too depraved and try to build a Tower to reach the heavens, God comes to reckon with them. He brings death to the land, and He scatters the people by confusing their language.

Decades later, Manny returns to LA for a visit with his new wife and daughter. He lives a totally different life now and literally speaks a different language. On the trip, Manny stops into a movie house to watch “Singin’ in the Rain.” He realizes that the plot is based on Nellie’s life. He cries watching the film because he misses her. But he also cries because he misses that life, that life of pursuing something bigger, something that lasts.

The final minutes of the film offer a montage of some of the greatest moments in film history, connecting it to Manny and Nellie's story. It feels like too much but but they tie it all together at the end. There is a real thread between Manny's life, him sitting in the seat in the movie house, connecting him to the greatness of these moments.

Babylon is over the top, but it’s supposed to be. LA in the 1920’s is the pinnacle of human success and indulgence. The wildest parties in the whole world are here. The richest and vainest people on earth can have whatever they want, completely unchecked. But the movie is committed to bringing it home. The one time I questioned if it was too much was when Margot Robbie’s character threw up at a fancy party. It was a lot of vomit. I daresay too much. But Robbie owns this moment so well that’s even though it’s wild, it works. And that’s how the whole movie is.

Damien Chazelle is a gifted writer/director and Justin Hurwitz, who he collaborated with on “Whiplash” and “La La Land,” writes an incredible score. You’ll get lost in the movie because it’s new and exciting, but it’s also one of the oldest stories in the world.
My Ratings: Moral rating: Extremely Offensive / Moviemaking quality: 5