Babylon - A thread that spoils this film (mainly so I can ask Mert some things)

Hey @Mert what did you think of the bit where Avatar turns up in this film for a bit?

Did you like the elephant shitting?

Were you IN or OUT when they descend into hell metaphorically and that big fucking bloke eats a live rat?

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Is this the Wolf of Wall Street but in the 1920s

And also good

Hi @The_Respected_User

I think Avatar was in because they asked Jimmy Cameron if they could use a clip from T2 and he said ‘only if you put Avatar in the there too, it’s my film about blue guys’

I enjoyed the elephant shitting and that every single form of bodily fluid was on display in the film. Piss! Shit! Blood! Wound oozing! Spit! Err… Was there cum? There was probably cum. Vomit!

I was not into that bit at all, and Tobey Maguire may have single-handedly ruined the film for me actually. I’d have given it a solid four stars until he showed up. Then it became something different entirely and it remained that way until the excellent final ten minutes.

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Count me in

let go your heart
let go your head

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:heart: :heart: :heart:

Love you, man. So glad that you think this

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I have a few questions for you.

  1. Can you believe my mum almost came to the cinema with me? I’d have hated to sit there watching that woman piss on that bloke with my mum next to me.

  2. What was your favourite bit?

  3. Do you think Brad Pitt saw the irony in playing that character? Or was it knowing?

  4. Did anyone have wild hair like Margot Robbie in the 20s?

  5. Which bit did you cry at?

  6. Would this have been better with an extra hour so they could give the trumpet player and the singer arcs that weren’t paper thin?

Do you not like films where people enjoy an excessive lifestyle? Do you only watch kitchen sink dramas?

Yes and no

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  1. I can believe it because your Mum is cool but I’m glad it didn’t pan out that way. There was a lady in my screening who was there on her own and, in any other film would have been the most annoying person in the world but I kind of loved her. She was having cartoonishly over the top reactions to the film in a way that could easily have convinced me she was paid to be there as an immersive experience of “the cinema experience is important” message of the film. She was gasping and yelling “oh no!” and at one point she had leaned completely forward out of her seat so she was effectively sitting next to me despite being on the row behind. My question is, was this your Mum?

  2. I LOVED the final heavy-handed, last-bit-of-2001-style sequence about the importance of cinema SO FUCKING MUCH but beyond that I thought the scene between Jean Smart and Brad Pitt where it was about “yeah, you’re done but you’re also immortal” was really well played and, despite being absurdly “nerd’s idea of hedonism” the opening party sequence is absolutely incredible from a technical filmmaking perspective, I was in absolute awe throughout of the sheer virtuosity of it all.

  3. I don’t know if he saw the irony as a person (I think he did and his performance leans into it) but I think the film is extremely knowing about it. My read is that he’s playing the personification of both old-Hollywood and modern-Hollywood simultaneously which is why his performance veers from being so broad and cartoonish to bringing the pathos at the end there. Then when he literally shoots himself in the head as a heavy-handed metaphor for the film industry doing the same thing I pumped my fists and internally yelled I LIKE THIS!

  4. Probably not, nobody was fit in the 1920s iirc

  5. I wept at the end bit, the Brad Pitt and Jean Smart scene and the Pitt suicide scene

  6. Yeah, I think it would have been to be fair. That bit needed to either go entirely or have another 40 mins to flesh it out properly. The fact that it’s in there so incongruously as a jazz fan indulgence is kind of perfect as well to me though.

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No, Wolf of Wall Street is one of the best films of the 2010s (which many people here dislike because they long for the return of the Hays Code), Babylon is two thirds an enjoyable film that then peters out in the final hour

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Agreed, and one of Scorsese’s three good films

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Might go see this then. Think itd be fun to watch people weeing on eachother in a big cinema

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come to cardiff

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another well argued and finely thought out point, cheers!

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Very much doubt it’s as good as the David Gray song though

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That wasn’t my mum.

I missed a lot of the Smart/Pitt scene as someone in my screening decided to have a phone call.

Flea was good, wasn’t he?

The Wolf of Wall Street is entertaining but the excess and bloat is indulgent in a way that doesn’t feel intentional in any meta-textual way whereas for Babylon, the indulgence is the point

Yeah, when he was on-screen I was like “Flea is good isn’t he!”

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