Holy fuck, where do I even begin with this movie? Elephant shit, someone ODing at a party and nobody really caring, a snake fight that goes on way too long, people literally dying on a film set, and lesbians (honestly the lesbians were fine, not the problem here). So yeah there's a lot going on and I do appreciate how it was shot because Damien Chazelle knows how to point a camera at chaos and make it look gorgeous, but I kept asking myself why this exists. Like why did someone spend eighty million dollars to make me watch an elephant take a dump on a guy? That's art I guess.

Anyway it starts with this guy Manuel Torres who works behind the scenes at a party and his boss is one of the people who helps hide the body of an actress who overdosed (classy stuff right out of the gate). Manuel eventually meets Brad Pitt's character who is this famous silent film actor and becomes his errand boy, his fixer, the guy who fetches a camera that literally saves a movie. And slowly Manuel starts climbing the ladder, giving suggestions, getting poached by something like MGM, and you realize oh this is the actual story. Not the stars. The guy holding the ladder.

The script actually does a really good job introducing everyone even though the movie is three hours long and feels like being strapped to a rocket. The main problems are the usual stuff - changing trends in Hollywood (talkies killed the silent stars), money problems, and each character's own stupid personality getting in their way. People say the movie has no narrative flow because it jumps between storylines but honestly have these people seen Pulp Fiction? Tarantino is way more abstract. At least Babylon keeps its feet on the ground even when it's showing you a guy get eaten by a prop alligator or whatever. (I might be misremembering the alligator thing but you get the point.)

The tempo is interesting because it's mostly this hard fun chaotic pace but then it just stops. Like full stop. Whenever something intimate happens between the main characters it slows way down and you get these beautiful quiet moments about the magic of making films or someone dies or two people have a negotiation that completely changes everything going forward. That's when the movie actually breathes and you remember oh right this is about something not just shock value.

Okay so James McKay. The Count. Played by Tobey Maguire looking like he hasn't slept since 2003. This guy is one of the most fun villains I've seen in a while and by fun I mean deeply unsettling. Deep dive reviews call him a "coke gremlin" which is perfect because he's got the sunken eyes and the gray skin and the rotting teeth and he used to be Spider-Man which is just hilarious casting honestly. But here's the thing that got me - he's also a failed filmmaker. He sits in his horrible basement club and pitches violent movie ideas to anyone who'll listen.

Then there's the scene that really sold me. The one where McKay takes Manny down into what I can only call the Asshole of LA. And I mean that literally. It's this underground tunnel society with clowns, midgets, obese grotesque bodies, a damn crocodile just chilling in the corner like it's normal, and the whole thing feels like a fever dream that David Lynch would watch and say "hey maybe tone it down a little." I'm very fond of this kind of macabre stuff - not in real life obviously (cough) - but in media? Yeah give me the weird underground circus with the depraved ringleader. It's the ringer for me.

But here's the part that actually got under my skin. McKay's big entertainment, the thing he's most excited about, this "next big thing" he wants to show off, is this exotic guy who will do anything for cash. And I mean anything. There's a moment where McKay is throwing fake money at this huge dude while the guy is eating rats. And McKay is just thrilled. Like genuinely giddy. It reminded me of the Red Room scene in Twin Peaks - that same feeling of watching something horrible happen while someone treats it like a party trick. The guy eating the rats isn't a person to McKay. He's a spectacle. A thing. And that's when you realize McKay isn't just a villain - he's what happens when the dream curdles so hard it turns into pure sadistic entertainment. He's Hollywood's id. Gross but fascinating.

Look I'm not going to pretend I understood every subtext on the first watch. There's a lot of really interesting writing and dialogue but you have to actually read between the lines and I had to sit there and slowly deconstruct each character like I was studying for a final exam just to figure out why they ended up where they did. (Spoiler: most of them end up dead or forgotten. Classic.)

So I finally finished it. And yeah, Manny and Nellie don't end up together. Of course they don't. She had those debts to James McKay and he had to leave LA just to survive. The last real moment between them is painful because you know they both wanted something different but the industry just chewed her up and spat her out. She got ridiculed by the people in power and Manny had to watch from afar.

Then there's that scene near the end where Manny is just sitting in a movie theater watching a film and it reflects the life of the person he loved, the person he wanted to marry. It hit me hard because it's not just about missing someone. It's about realizing that what's on the screen is a ghost. A memory. And everyone else in that theater is laughing or crying or just sitting there and they have no idea what that image means to him. That's the twist I didn't expect - the way the movie shows that behind every film there's someone's real pain, real loss. Different people relating to the same picture in completely different ways. An amalgamation of how we as humans perceive media. Some see entertainment. Some see their whole life.

And then the film ends with Singin' in the Rain and this collage of scenes in black and white, then it traces back into color and shows the beginning again. The colored part is where they feel most alive. Manny says he just wanted to be part of something bigger. It's abstract but it works.

Here's why I think movies go abstract at moments like this. Because real emotions aren't linear. Destruction and beauty happen at the exact same time - you lose someone but you still love them, the industry breaks you but you still want to be in it. Abstraction lets a movie show that contradiction without pretending to have an answer. The black and white flashes aren't just style. They're memory. They're the past bleeding into the present. And when it cuts back to color, that's not a happy ending. That's just life continuing while you're still broken. Babylon uses abstraction to say: you can't separate the beauty from the destruction. They're the same thing. That's why Manny is crying in a theater while watching people dance. That's the whole point.

I think Babylon loves movies and hates Hollywood at the same time which is a very toxic relationship honestly but that's the point. It asks who actually builds the pictures (the Manuels, the nobodies) and who gets erased (the Nellies, the wild ones who burn too bright). And it keeps reminding you that underneath every golden age there's a basement with a crocodile and a dead body and some guy throwing fake money at a rat-eater while clowns watch. It's messy and exhausting and way too long and I kind of loved it. You don't walk away feeling good. You walk away feeling like you just survived something. Which I think is exactly what they were going for.

(Also I'm still not over the elephant. What the hell was that about.)

Anyways that's my two cents to it.

Damn hold on let me think cause this is a really good movie I just need a couple of days to think about if I want to talk about the science of this movie. I still want to read the entire book actually.