ALWAYS MAKE A SCENE.
I didn’t catch Babylon until now, a few years after its premiere. I was deceived by a few lackluster reviews, forgetting the fact that all of director Damien Chazelle’s previous films were outstanding. Somehow, I became convinced that Babylon wasn’t up there, and the running time added to that feeling. Now that I’ve seen it, I feel quite mystified by the response. Why weren’t everybody as enthralled as I was – and why on earth didn’t the Academy love this movie? After all, a gorgeous epic about Hollywood is right up their alley.
A Bel Air orgy
In 1926, life is a never-ending party for people like studio boss Don Wallach (Jeff Garlin) and superstar Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt). When we first meet them, it is by way of Manuel ”Manny” Torres (Diego Calva) who’s been hired to bring an elephant to one of Wallach’s huge bashes in Bel Air. When he throws a party it has everything from jazz bands, a never-ending supply of booze and drugs, fights, guests fucking wherever they feel like it… and a surprise or two. Manny finds a girl trying to get in, Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), who tells him that she’s a star. She hasn’t done anything yet, she’s not famous, but a star. Manny falls for her charm and confidence and helps her inside. Over the years, as the film business keeps evolving, careers will be made and broken.
Moving from sound to talkies
I’m not going to pretend that I’m the only one who loves this movie; there were many others who fell for this story about one of Hollywood’s wildest rides: the transition from sound to talkies. The opening is a knock-out, Wallach’s bacchanal representing the joyous 1920s at its height. As the film progresses, we enter the sobering 1930s with its Depression and unpredictable consequences for people who became famous during the silent era but had to see their bond with the audience broken because of their voices. As in La La Land (2016), Chazelle has crafted a love letter to Hollywood, but there are many dark streaks as we follow the journey of his characters.
The actors are all great, including Pitt as a king of Tinseltown (allegedly based on John Gilbert) and Robbie as the ambitious, talented and boorish wannabe star who becomes the talk of the town; there’s also Calva as the Mexican who stumbles onto a career behind the scenes; and Jovan Adepo as Sidney Palmer, an African-American jazz musician who performs at Wallach’s party and starts appearing in movies. He soon faces racism in Hollywood. Chazelle also has a gay character in the film, Fay the title-writer (Li Jun Li), who becomes smitten with Nellie before losing her job. Chazelle’s message is easily understood: you may be tolerated for a while in the system, until you become a problem, or until you can’t stand being humiliated.
Damien Chazelle stages some of his sequences in a furiously entertaining way that barely lets you breathe.
Palmer disappears a little too abruptly in this long but frequently engrossing film, but there’s always something else to catch your attention. That’s true of the technical details, including Linus Sandgren’s seductive cinematography, and Justin Hurwitz’s energetic jazz score. Chazelle also stages some of his sequences in a furiously entertaining way that barely lets you breathe; that’s true not only of Wallach’s bacchanal, but also of a sweaty attempt to shoot a scene with Nellie where everybody’s trying to figure out how to work with sound.
The emotions are there near the end, when Manny returns to this crazy place many years later, goes to the movies and has a tearful breakdown in the dark as the masterpiece he’s watching reminds him of an era that will never come back. It’s simply irresistible.
Babylon 2022-U.S. 189 min. Color. Widescreen. Written and directed by Damien Chazelle. Cinematography: Linus Sandgren. Music: Justin Hurwitz. Production Design: Florencia Martin. Costume Design: Mary Zophres. Cast: Brad Pitt (Jack Conrad), Margot Robbie (Nellie LaRoy), Diego Calva (Manuel ”Manny” Torres), Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, Lukas Haas, Katherine Waterston, Tobey Maguire, Flea, Eric Roberts, Olivia Wilde, Spike Jonze.
Trivia: Co-executive produced by Maguire. Emma Stone was first cast as Nellie, but had to bow out.
BAFTA: Best Production Design. Golden Globe: Best Original Score.
Last word: “I did get a certain amount of inspiration from the general phenomenon of all these kinds of religions, or you could call them cults, spiritual gatherings and flocks, that were congregating in LA at that time, and that have, in some ways, always congregated in California. Something in the air here. But looking at the 1920s, specifically, there’s a certain kind of fervor in the air that I think really can’t be totally separated from the fervor of people trying to be in movies and the fervor of early movie days.” (Chazelle, RogerEbert.com)
