Babylon - 2022

 This is Manny’s story. I’vve never heard of this Diego Calva, everybody said ‘the movie with Brad Pitt and margot Robbie’, but he’s the main protagonist here, and then there’s Nellie, Margot’s character. 

I didn’t llike this movie; it’s done well enough, it’s a big story, but it’s not for me. Those big parties only look paathetic to me, if you can’t have fun without drugs then you’re not having fun at all because that’s all fake. 

Manny is the son of Mexican immigrants who wants to work in the cinematic industry, be part of something big. 

Nellie is a lost girl as much as she is a wanna-be star, and she emphasizes the second to forget the first.

They meet at a producer’s party. At this time he wors or this Don Wallach Nellie crashes her car against a statue or something, and the security guy wants to send her away because she’s not a guest, but Manny gets her inside. She immdiately asks about drugs, and it ys everything that he just opens a door listing all  the different drugs that can be found in the room…

Nellie starts dancing like she’s possessed - and she is, by cocaine.

There’s even a jazz band, poor guys look so out of place in a circle of hell like that: everybody is so full of drugs, and alcohol, there’s so many walking or dancing completely naked, there’s people doing it right there in front of others, honestly I can’t say if it’s more disgusting or pathetic. 

When a young actress needs to be taken to the hospital, Manny’s help is asked and he suggests using the elephant, the surprise of the party, as a distraction to bring her out. Nellie is randomly chosen to take her place in the movie.

Manny is totally fascinated by this girl who isn’t just pretty, but she’s also wild and a force of nature.

He tells her he fell in love with her, but she just moves on. 

It’s 1926 and their lives change: Nellie starts acting in a silent movie, and she can cry on command - “I just think of home” - she immediately steals every scene and becomes a star. 

She will also cause a production company to shut down after she learned that the money came from Constance Moore’s company (she was her co-star, who was the real star before her and still wanted to be…)

After that big party, Manny is asked to help Jack and take him home becase he drank so much he passed out. Manny does, and by doing this his life changes, because Jack takes a liking to him and wants Manny to go with him on set. Manny takes care of a strike and manages to get them a new camera after the last one is broken, and so he starts his career. 

In 1927 Jack hears of a talking picture, and sends Manny to New York to check it out: indeed by people’s reaction he can tell that that’s the future. He also meets Nellie again, and they talk, and we see that her mother is in a sanatorium there. Her father has taken over as her manager ever since her first success.

With sound, everything changs and new problems arise. Any small noise risks ruining a scene. A guy, Billy, dies because they wouldn’t let him breathe…

Nellie still works with director Ruth, Jack has a new wife and Sidney still plays with his group at their parties. 

Nellie is always wearing very little, and her dear dad says “a little more attire’s always in the way. Nellie dresses low ‘cause Nellie is low” - how nice huh? Dead daddy indeed…

While Nellie is in the bathroom, she hears two men talking trash about her, how she’s nothing, awful; she dries her tears and goes out. Her dad was chatting up a girl with his famous snake story; she challenges him to do it again tonight and they all drive until they find a rattlesnake, but he passes out before he can do anything. Nobody would approach the snake of course, so she didit herself and the snake bit her neck. Nobody helped her or knew what to do until lady Fay killled the snake and sucked the venom out of her, saving her life. 

Nellie was so thankful that she fully kissed her.  

After Manny’s suggestion to put the orchestra and Sidney on set, Sidney becomes famous. Manny is approached and asked to leave MGM and go back to Kinoscope, to manage Nellie’s career among other things. Because times are changing, and “today’s audiences find her pornographic”, and she’s also gambling a lot, and “she sounds like a donkey”, so he accepts and has a whole plan to make her a sophisticated actress; she must be taught how to dress and how to speak. At first she’s all “I’m ready to change and I’ll do whatever you need”. Manny is very excited to be actually making movies.

1928. Sidney gets a big house and a big car. Manny has to fire Fay because there were pictures of her with Nellie that were causing rumours ad they were worried that Fay was damaging her image…

Jack is deeply hurt when he learns that George shot himself, he was a dear friend and the first one to tell him he had talent. Up until now Jack was always there to help him whenever he broke up with someone or whenever a girl didn’t want him, but this time George actually did it.

Here Jack does a nice speech to his theatre-actress wife, because movies are magic and are seen by millions of people, not just by a few rich people who can afford it.

it’s 1930. Manny ‘pulled a lot of strings’ to get Nellie invited to some rich people’s party. Elinor is there as always to advise her, but Nellie is a horror from the start. Whoever told her to kiss people’s hands, both male and females?

Manny plays his part well, and tells people that he’s Spanish, from Madrid, not Mexican), while Sidney mostly sits and lets people talk, but Nellie can’t do it. Despite what Elinor told her, she drinks a lot and as soon as they’re alone she yells at Manny that she can’t do it because they’re all awful and they don’t like her. Manny insists she can do it because they can save her career, and really hopes she can behave, but she soon explodes and starts swearing and insulting those people, and she stuffs her face which becomes all red,dirty llike in a vampire movie, and she even throws up. 

Jack’s latest movie was a total flop and the audience was laughing at him. 

Manny has to ask Sidney to darken his face because other musicians from the South have much darker skin than him and he looked white in comparison. Well, in a black-and-white movie he probably did.

Elinor wrote a piece on how Jack’s career is over, but also tells him that what he did has made him immortal, people will see his movies many many years from now. 

Nellie appears at Manny’s door all desperate because she kept gambling and she lost lots of money and now she owes gangster James McKay 85.000 dollars. That’s dangeroous people who might kill her for it, so Manny tells her to pay, for sure. She says she can’t. “You’re Nellie LaRoy. Of course you have the money” but she doesn’t, between her habits and her dad’s investments, she’s got nothing.

At first he loses it, of course, yelling in Spanish, and then saying that he’s always tried to help her and “all you’ve done is break my heart” but she begs him and of course he agrees to help her.

Jack is only offered bad parts in bad movies that will never be a hit.

Manny is looking for the money and asks for “the count”’s help, but only after they deliver the money and are face to face with McKay does he learn that it’s all prop money.

This McKay is a weird guy who has horrible ideas for movies and who takes them to the weirdest place to see a man eat a mouse alive.

Here McKay realises it’s fake money and Manny’s scared to death and reacts on instinct when he sees McKay’s man’s gun. Manny hits him with the first thing he can grab and then he runs.

People shoot but they get away and drive home. He leaves the Count home to get his stuff and he goes to get Nellie. It takes him a long time to have her understand that it’s serious, he wants her to go with him. 

Finally she seems to understand. Even after saying she’s no good for him, she says she’ll marry him. But then Manny stops to get the Count and when she’s alone in the car, she leaves. 

Of course. She could never do that, live that life, normally, be a wife… she’s too wild for that.

A killer finds Manny at the Count’s house and starts shooting. The Count and his roommate die, but by chance he’s still alive and he cries and begs and he’s so terrified he pissed himself… the killer must actually be moved by such a sight because he tells him to leave Los Angeles, go away. 

He does. Even without Nellie, he does.

We see that Sidney left the movies but is still playing at smaller venues. Fay has decided to leave for Europe. Jack is tired of the life he has now and shoots himself.

Elinor dies at 76 years of age, after leaving work. This is 1935.

In 1938 Nellie is found dead of overdose in a poor apartment.

In 1952 Manny comes back after making himself a life in New York. Now he has a shop selling radios, a wife and a daughter. He looks at the studios then goes to the cinema to watch Singing in the Rain, and he thinks of all that happened and he cries. 

The audience loves the movie and he sort of smiles, guess he still loves movies after all. Or he just remembers his youngdays with nostalgia, who knows.

I liked Fay who always kept her head on her shoulders and sent her money home to her family. I liked Sidney who chose dignity over fame. 

I don’t really agree with what I read about this movie, that in the end it was all worth it because they made movies that are magic and immortal and all that. There were deaths that were not worth it, no. Billy’s life was not worth it, just to make a movie. If they had just listened to him and let him breathe, instead of throwing him inside that oven… so no, not really “all” was worth it, and many people were awful and did terrible things.

Manny Torres - Diego Calva

Sidney Palmer - Jovan Adepo

Ellinor St John - Jean Smart

Nellie LaRoy - Margot Robbie

Jack Conrad - Brad Pitt

George Munn - Lukas Haas

Lady Fay Zhu - Li Jun Li

Robert Roy - Eric Roberts

James McKay - Tobey Maguire