Hacker Cinema
Babylon
2022 · Film · 189 min
Directed by Damien Chazelle
A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, tracing the rise and fall of multiple characters in an era of unbridled decadence and depravity during Hollywood's transition from silent films to sound films in the late 1920s.
2 negative1 neutralfrom 3 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
Old movies are kind of slow but I'm much less frustrated because they are short: an hour, at most two. That's more than enough to tell a story. Modern movies are two hours at minimum with some crossing over three with absolutely nothing to tell (e.g Babylon 2022, completely pissed me off).
I don't think the reason is "public needed time to process info", more likely both the length and the intensity (of changing sights, not of meaning) were ultimately determined by production costs. Filming two hours is more expensive than one hour. Filling an hour with 60 one-minute cuts is more expensive then 30 two-minute cuts because of all the setup and decorations.
Production is now cheaper thanks to CGI, box offices are larger thanks to higher prices and the global market. You no longer have to be frugal when filming, the protection against sloppy overextended movies is now taste and not money. And taste is scarce.
The article seems to have a simplistic thesis that it doesn't really develop beyond: optimization, efficiency and focus is not fun, and these things epitomize SV. But I'm not sure that even scans.
Those things (optimization, efficiency and focus) can most definitely be fun. And SV is not really about those things.
SV is more about "relentlessness" and the wild (or Wild West) allocation of capital. This makes the Bay Area a kind of crazy frontier-town, and it comes with all the vices that entails.
The homeless crisis can be seen as one symptom of the Bay Area's frontier-town vibe.
Cash App founder Bob Lee's tragic death brought to light another aspect of the "funderbelly" of SV, in "The Lifestyle"^0
Debate rages for sure, but "fun" and "fucked up" commonly overlap: Emily Chang takes a kind of spurned spinster bias in Brotopia^1. The book is her SV expose that spins a yarn similar to the party-scene-disillusionment trope that's a common thread in 90s indie films, such as Trainspotting, and Doug Liman's Go. Chang's work, however, is in line with modern discourse style, as she takes a more furious, righteous bent, leaving little to the imagination as she passes judgement against what she sees as an emblematic American abomination.
A more recent, relevant and mainstream revival of that trope is 2022's Babylon by Damien Chazelle, set in 1920s Hollywood. One could hypothesize that the debauchery of Hollywood may mirror that of the Bay Area, possibly stemming from the lavish influx of capital to those whose maturity has yet to catch up with their wealth.
In the same vein, themes of "the price of fame" and the corrupting power of celebrity hint that life in the high line of Silicon Valley might be susceptible to a similar moral decay.
Of course, it could be something else entirely, but it might be the case that the issue is not that SV fails to understand fun. It's instead that it doesn't know how to handle it, or do it in a healthy way. Eventually, a kind of puritan sterility is the natural companion of such a debauched underbelly. It may therefore be that lifelessness criticized by the author is, paradoxically, the result of SV having too much fun, yet not having the integrity or morality to make it sustainable, or healthy.
If SV learns how to make its boom town vibe sustainable and healthy, it might be able to stay aloft to enjoy the whole ride. This could enhance everything about it.
0: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12085323/Inside-Lifestyle-Cash-App-founder-Bob-Lee.html
1: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/brotopia-silicon-valley-secretive-orgiastic-inner-sanctum
I mean, if the premisces are true, this is concerning.
I agree on some points (Babylon was a weird movie, not sure if it was volontary, but no Jewish person in this 3 hour story feel like a huge omission).
On others, I think the author is wrong. Plainly. On the Harvard percentage : it is the same in France. But, in the 50s, close to 50 % of Jews went further than high school, when the population average was 10%. If you were Jewish, you were five times more likely to go to higher education. Now, it's 85% for white in cities, regardless of your religion. The proportion have to diminish.
Also, Jewish people tends to not intermarry as much as they used to, and that plus a more secular life, and the fact that if the mother isn't Jewish, the child isn't either (except a converti on later in life, but educated people tends to be more secular).
And last: a non-negligible portion of at least mildly rich Jews went in Israel in the 90s. For some schools (expensive business school and private, expensive moviemaker schools), it will automatically diminish the proportion.
So I'm not at all convinced by the author here. I need more data points.