Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5107 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-10-13
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Synopsis
BABYLON is the quintessential British reggae film from 1980, centring on sound system 'toaster' Blue (Brinsley Forde) and his crew, Ital Lion, as they ready themselves for a face off with rival group Jah Shaka. As the event approaches, Blue's personal life becomes plagued with difficulty when he is fired from his job and begins to suspect his girlfriend of cheating on him. However, the worst is yet to come when Blue is savagely beaten by the police and his Ital Lion brethren discover that their equipment has been destroyed. Broken and succumbing to the belief that recent events are an indication of society's rejection of his race, Blue decides to fight back...

Customer Reviews

classic movie
Someone somewhere has got this on video, a cousin, uncle or friend. For years this film, videoed from channel 4, has been passed around, copied, passed around and copied some more. This is my all time quintessential black british movie, I know it line from line, tune from tune. The acting is not acting but just life. The characters could be illussive family members, who as a youngster would think they were cool and funny.
But seriously, this film tackles the harsh realities of black british life and culture in the 70's and 80's. The SUS laws, right wing hatred, black identity, the clashes between 1st and 2nd generation Caribbean immigrants and the phenomenal outlet of the sound system.
The cast are brilliant, the leading actor Brinsley Forbes from Asward, does a great job. You will spot some other well known faces, like the guy from Brush stokes/flash ads and Beefy, dont know his real name, but say it to anyone in the know and they'll just laugh. He is the balls in this film, hard head, hot head, dont take no crap from anyone.
Anyway hope i have done this film some justice, have been waiting about 25 years for it to come out on video let alone dvd. JUNGLE LION RAH!!.......... Oh yeah the soundtrack is mad.

"This is my ****ing country, lady! And it's never been ****ing lovely!"
Seen today, Babylon works better as a time capsule of a certain time and place - both in British cinema and on the streets - than as a movie in itself. Once groundbreaking, years of 1980s miserablist dramas about life at the bottom have worn away some of the film's edge, while the 70s patois that makes up part of the dialogue in several scenes at times turns the film into an unsubtitled foreign movie for many modern audiences.

Fitting somewhere between the kitchen sink dramas of the 50s and 60s and the kind of confrontational TV plays directed by Alan Clarke - in fact, this was originally going to be a BBC production before they pulled the plug after filming started in the wake of the TV version of Clarke's Scum being banned - it's the kind of film that originally seemed to mark out a lot of promising careers that never really took off. Leading man, former Double Decker and lead singer of Aswad (who provide much of the film's soundtrack) Brinsley Forde didn't make another film for 21 years; director Franco Rosso only made one more film, a disastrously misjudged adaptation of Janni Howker's superb children's novel The Nature of the Beast; writer Martin Spellman, coming off Quadraphenia, would see his scripts go unproduced for a couple of decades after Defence of the Realm and For Queen and Country. Indeed, of the cast only Mel Smith, as a racist garage owner and a surprisingly natural Karl Howman as the soul white member of Forde's group would become familiar faces. As a result, the film seems very much stuck in its time and attitudes.

While the racial tension and feeling of dancing on the edge of a volcano haven't dated, the attitudes are more confrontational than they would be today. In pre-PC 1980 whites using racist language openly in the street was so commonplace it seems shocking in an age when many hold the same feelings but wrap them up in less obscene language as if that makes them more acceptable. But it's not the only way that the film sometimes shows its age. At times its unfocussed and ambling, while the film's last act doesn't entirely convince, giving the feeling that, like the more genteel 'issue' films of the 50s, it has to end on a bold cathartic statement to give the movie a big finish even if it doesn't quite ring true. Along with the naturalistic performances Chris Menges' excellent photography, which benefits from a good DVD transfer, helps give the film a near-documentary immediacy that helps sell parts of the film that shouldn't quite work, but at times the film feels like there's perhaps more energy than passion than substance. Considering how 'white' British cinema was at the time that was enough to make an impact in 1980, but it's not quite enough to make the film keep all of that impact after 29 years.

Blue, it's a colour so true
Franco Rosso's 1979 film stars Aswad founder Brinsley Forde as disenfranchised DJ `Blue'. Poverty, institutionalised racism, violence and disaffection with life for a young black musician in the UK in the late 70s are the core themes of the movie, and Forde's assured acting supported by future `Brushstrokes' star Karl Howman and drug dealer Trevor Laird makes this a powerful film of its time as well as an important and timeless social comment.

There are some good DVD extras on here too; there is a Babylon commentary track featuring producer Gavrik Losey, lead actor Brinsley Forde, so-writer Martin Stellman and director Franco Rosso. Having this much aural input usually ends in chaos, but not here. With perfect manners and a delicate sensibility towards any suggestion of memory loss, they don't talk over each other and actually have an impressive amount of recollections considering so much time has passed since the film was made. Amongst other anecdotes we learn that although set in Brixton, most of the film was shot in Deptford and Lewisham.

It is an understatement to say that Babylon was before its time. Despite not being well received by a guilty and shamed society, the film did its part in helping Lord Scarman to stamp out police racism and sits proudly in the BFI's annals as a modern classic.