‘Babylon’ and other films.
Like a speaker blast from a not-exactly-distant past, the 1980 British film “Babylon” is only now getting an American release, and its late arrival is a welcome one. Franco Rosso’s film, co-written with Martin Stellman and starring Brinsley Forde, is a raw, propulsive and authentic glimpse of South London black culture in the pressurized hot zone of Thatcherite England.
Forde playsa reggae deejay in a sound system crew of similarly crafty, ambitious young Brixton-ites set foran upcoming club night battle. Baked into that contest story line, though, is a thumping bass line of tension-filled humanity that lays bare black immigrants’ struggle living under a National Front-emboldened cloud of racism and dispossession. Assertive and ebullient, “Babylon” is as alive as a movie can be to the everyday mesh of liberating art, humorous camaraderie and hazardous political reality.
The cast’s rumble and spark are draw enough, but there’s also Chris Menges’ textured urban cinematography and Rosso’s empathetic direction, like neorealism rewired and amplified. Even the subtitles for the slang-riddled Jamaican patois are a cultural statement: They educate as they translate. Dennis Bovell’s reggae soundtrack, however, is a master class of mood — a sonic heartbeat full of joy, pain and fury, the needle drops like matches struck and the music an insistent, scented flame you hear, see and feel. “Babylon.” In English and Jamaican patois with English subtitles. Not rated. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes. Playing: Laemmle Glendale; Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica.