Babylon
Franco Rosso’s “Babylon” finally makes its American theatrical debut in 2019, and it feels like an ideal moment for it to happen. Unfortunately, that’s because this moment in American history is not ideal; open racism, xenophobia and prejudice against “the other” is alive and well in white America. “Babylon” takes place in Thatcher-era London, but it feels as alive with painful reality as if it were made in Trump’s America.
If Spike Lee said that this film was an inspiration for his “Do the Right Thing” in 1989, I would believe him. I don’t know how he would have seen it, due to its lack of availability in the US, but there is part of this film’s structure, and how it approaches racism, that put it in that same wheelhouse of telling a small-scale story that is representative of a larger truth. I don’t know the first thing about what a character like Lee’s Mookie or “Babylon’s” Blue’s life is like, but it’s hard not to empathize with them as society shows them hate and bigotry, even if they come off as friendly.
The film focuses on a group of Jamaican friends in London who do odd jobs during the day while DJ’ing at night. Their life is not one of glitz and glamour but of clawing for everything you can get, and dealing with a white community. The film’s primary character is Blue (played by Brinsley Forde), who is a mechanic and reggae artist who has to deal with the racist words and philosophies of his boss (played by Mel Smith), as well as racial profiling and garden variety bigotry away from work, and away from the club he and his friends spin at. It’s very much a slice of life in this particular time and place, and we get other characters that snap into focus along the way like Beefy (Trevor Laird), Ronnie (Karl Howman) and Dreadhead (Archie Pool) as we follow their lives, and experience the highs and lows in them.
The screenplay by Rosso and Martin Stellman is more about reflecting the reality of these characters than telling a narrative with a beginning and end, although the film does have specific plot points it gets to in these characters’s journeys, especially in their professional careers and the hate they experience. We become fully engaged by these lives, feel joy when they are doing what they love, and feel pain in how they are treated by the outside world. In the press notes on this re-release, it’s not surprising to read that Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” was an inspiration to the filmmakers, because Rosso and cinematographer Chris Menges take a very street-level approach to this world that sucks us in, and is scored by Dennis Bovel in a reggae style that makes it feel unlike anything else I had ever seen for this type of story. Images and sounds are what you will likely remember from this film, but the way we feel in the experience is what will make it stand out as one of the most significant films you’ll watch in 2019, even if it came out nearly 40 years ago.
