GOOD MORNING, BABYLON
A film review by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1987 Jeff Meyer
Seen at the Seattle Film Festival: GOOD MORNING, BABYLON (USA/Italy, 1987) Directors: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani Story and Screenplay: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani; screenplay in collaboration with Tonino Guerra Cast: Vincent Spano, Joaquim De Almeida, Greta Scacchi, Desiree Becker, Omero Antonutti, and Carles Dance as D.W. Griffith Partially subtitled.
This was the much ballyhooed closing film at the festival, made by the Brothers Tavianni who have gained such fame from films like KAOS and NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS; an Italian/American production, it tells the story of two brothers, skilled artisans who move to America to practice their trade. They end up working in Hollywood, attempting to work on D.W. Griffith's production of INTOLERANCE, and to stay together.
I don't know what there is to compliment in this film. The dialogue is usually in English, since the brothers speak it after arriving in America, but the dialogue is usually stilted, with exclamations that seem unnatural and artificial. The plot is too simplistic throughout most of the film, and the characters seem to be something out of a Horatio Alger story; D. W. Griffith is treated like a cross between Leonardo and Moses, and INTOLERANCE is made to look like the ultimate statement of anti-war sentiment (it wasn't).
The brothers are broken up by moronic family pride, which makes them look suddenly stupid and macho, and this finally turned my sympathies against them-- one of their wives dies, and they are no longer "equal," which causes the widower to leave for Europe and WW I. This all winds up in an utterly and unintentionally hilarious ten-minute sequence which was supposed to be a tear-jerker, but instead had the audience giggling uncontrollably. The brothers meet up on an Italian battle field, and are individually bayonetted by a fleeing German infantryman while they're bending over one another. And then, in their dying moments (which are drawn out to a fantastic degree), they photograph one another with a newsreel movie camera so that "their sons can see them." I thought part of it was based on a Monty Python sequence I remember, but I can't be sure.
A fair-to-poor film, ending in a truly astonishing screw-up. F. Avoid.
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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