A Hot Take On ‘Babylon’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Even though there were times as I watched “Babylon” that I thought it might the best movie of the year, it ultimately failed to the point that I walked out just around the time we entered the third act. I do this all the time with movies — walk out — so it’s not the insult you might think it is.

Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy and Diego Calva plays Manny Torres in Babylon from Paramount Pictures.

It’s just I really, really hate a certain type of conflict in stories and because I felt the movie had kind of lost the thread by that point, I just couldn’t justify forcing myself to sit through a lot of bad things happening that I didn’t like. The chief thing that led me to this point is, sad to say, Diego Calva. He just couldn’t get me invested enough to go where ever director Damien Chazelle wanted to take me.

There came a point, near the very end of the movie when I gave up. Something about Diego Calva-as-Damien Chazelle proxy just wasn’t doing it for me. So I left the theatre before the movie ended, feeling not a little ashamed of myself. Before that point, I was really digging the movie. It’s Wolf-of-Wall Street level of excess was great and interesting.

I was enthralled by the 20-odd minute prelude before the title credit was shown. I was like, “If the rest of the movie is this good, I might actually finish a movie for once.”

And whenever Brad Pitt or Margot Robbie were on the screen I was totally invested. The Robbie plot of the movie did become a bit trite just about when I decided I wanted to leave. And, really, I think if more work had been put into the taking a few unexpected left turns I might have stayed longer. And, like I said, I didn’t finish the movie so it’s very possible it ultimately didn’t end the way I assumed it would..

I have to admit that the movie was very good at characterizations and I was reminded — yet again — that with the novel I’m working on I really, really need to create interesting characters if I’m going to successfully get people to finish the novel in the first place.

Anyway. I really, really like Babylon even though I ultimately walked out. I would have revamped the Diego Calva and Margot Robbie storyline some. It grew tiresome. Instead of dragging it all out way, way too long, I would have wrapped it up a lot sooner and then done some sort of “post-Hollywood success” third act with the Robbie character. (Who knows, maybe they did that and I was just too impatient to wait through all the horrible things that had to happen to get to that point.)

Go see Babylon, though. It’s really good — especially the first 20 minutes.

Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

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