Babylon

 

Babylon
Starring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart
Directed by Damien Chazelle

The Biblical story of Babylon is an interesting one and really encapsulates what Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle seemed to want to tell its audience, even though I'm sure he's not a biblical scholar. The origins of Babylon began with a man named Nimrod who was known for his pride and rebellion, and his kingdom was known as Babel, whose inhabitants wanted to be equal with God by building a great tower to the heavens, but God confused their language so they couldn't understand one another. Babel was then called Babylon, and was known for its immorality, pride, and wickedness. So while Chazelle probably doesn't hold a degree in biblical literature, it's no surprise why he called this epic tale "Babylon," as it takes place where many people believe the modern-day equivalent of Babylon to be - Hollywood.

In the late 1920s, Mexican-American immigrant Manny Torres (Diego Calva) aspires to have a role in the silent film industry, and works very menial jobs in order to work his way up the ladder. While bringing an elephant to an opulent, drug-fueled, sex-crazed Hollywood party, he meets wannabe starlet Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), and the two hit it off right away. Also at the party is Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), a jazz trumpet player; Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), a Chinese-American cabaret singer; Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), a Hollywood journalist; and Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), a popular silent film actor with a slew of broken marriages and broken bottles. Manny is tasked with taking an intoxicated Jack home, and he takes a shining to Manny, bringing him to the set of a major epic he's filming. Using his intelligence and ingenuity, Manny rises the ranks and eventually becomes a director himself. Jack continued to ride his fame in the silent pictures, and Nellie was discovered at the party and grew into a famous silent film era actress in her own right, despite her wild antics in real life.

Yet as the 1930s began, the era of silent film ended and the "talkies" began to rise to prominence - when sound was introduced to movies and actors were finally heard on screen. Jack's voice was lauded, and Nellie's was downplayed as annoying and screeching, and both saw their careers on the decline. Manny, however, adapted to the changing landscape and became a powerful man in the world of cinema, and set out to reinvent Nellie's career with lackluster results. She dives deeper into drugs and gambling, eventually owing a debt to the nefarious mob boss James McKay (Tobey Maguire), leaving Manny trying to get her out of it. For Sidney, "talkies" heightened his popularity but was also diminished due to racism he faced on set, and Lady Fay Zhu found herself on the outs as well, settling for moving overseas for a resurgence in her career. Proving Hollywood is anything but the glitz and glamor it advertises, we see through the lives of these people how incredibly cruel it can be, as Elinor St. John told Jack, they'll soon be replaced by younger, more driven actors and writers and their names will only be remembered when their movies are played.

While Chazelle is known for another love letter to classic Hollywood - the Emma Stone/Ryan Gosling musical "La La Land" - there's not a whole lot to sing about with "Babylon," which serves as the darker antithesis to the aforementioned musical. It's a dizzying, wild, and unabashedly provocative film that's a surprise from the Oscar-winning director since his other work are more intrinsic, technically adapt, and focusing on characters' desires for perfection. Here, we witness the wild time in Hollywood as the silent era died and the "talkies" began, and "wild" is an understatement for that era. The beginning of the film is the wild, sex-fueled orgy of debauchery and sin that we meet our forlorn characters, and it's an extensive scene that lasts over half an hour and doesn't let up, providing some of the most wildest scenes in cinema in the last few years. While Hollywood tried to play it safe after the pandemic, you can tell Chazelle doesn't, and the opening scene is only the appetizer on the dinner from hell you're about to devour.

"Babylon" doesn't waste a second of its three-hour runtime, as we hop from moment to moment, year to year, with breakneck speed. From the aforementioned party to being on different Hollywood sets at the same time to new "talkie" sets and an unforgettable (as much as you want to) literal descent into the "a**hole of Hollywood," you're not given a moment to breathe, but rather it pulls you like a roller coaster that doesn't seem to stop - and that's not a bad thing. Everything about the film is top notch, from Chazelle's script that meanders and weaves its way through the different characters to Linus Sandgren's cinematography that seamlessly traverses the ravages of time, to Justin Hurwitz's score that elevates every moment, and Tom Cross's editing technique which is one-of-a-kind and one I would've never wanted to attempt - everything behind the scenes correlates into a unique film that will probably never be seen again due to its insane premise and the fact that it was a big flop in cinema, mostly because it was an original idea and a little over three hours long, something most people didn't want to sit through not knowing a lot about it.

A slight aside here: while I'm all for sequels and superhero films, it seems those are what Hollywood now uses as metrics of success. There's a lot being said about the fact that both of Margot Robbie's films this year ("Amsterdam" and "Babylon") were big flops, but they were destined to be flops - no one goes to the cinema anymore to see these prestigious films (although "Amsterdam" had its own issues) because they'll wait until they land on streaming services instead, but they'll dish out money to see intellectual properties they already know about no matter how terrible ("Thor: Love & Thunder") they are. Hollywood needs to get back to bringing these arthouse films back to the big screen and advertise them as much as they do their superhero films, otherwise all we'll end up with are those big-budget spectacles.

Back to the meat of the film, on top of the great cinematography, editing, sound, costume deign, and script, the performances are all powerful and memorable, performed by a cavalcade of A-list and soon-to-be-A-list actors who commit to their bits with their whole souls. While the likes of Jovan Adepo's Sidney, Li Jun Li's Lady Fay, and Jean Smart's Elinor were understated, they all shined during the short time they got to shine on screen - not to mention the cameos by the likes of Tobey Maguire (who proves we'll never see his Spider-Man the same again), Olivia Wilde, Lukas Haas, Max Minghella, Katherine Waterston, Samara Weaving (who needs to do a film with Margot Robbie where they're sisters because they look so alike), Spike Jonze, Flea, Jeff Garlin, Eric Roberts, and Ethan Suplee.

Yet the main focus of the film lies in two critically acclaimed actors and an up-and-comer who has already proved his acting chops in his first major role. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, and Diego Calva all give commanding, award-worthy performances as three characters who showcase their powers and weaknesses for the audience to see in full display.

For Brad Pitt's Jack, his biggest strength is his star power capability in the silent film era, garnering all the fame and attention for his multitude of memorable roles. Yet proving the old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely, he lets fame get to his head with a slew of failed marriages and drunken mistakes, but even those don't sour us from Jack's character, because Pitt infuses his own feelings into the role. Much like Jack's continued presence in his films, Pitt has had a lengthy run of memorable roles himself, and when talking pictures started and people lambasted Jack's voice, his stock plummeted to the point where he couldn't find work anymore - something I'm sure Pitt worries about himself as year after year new up-and-coming actors invade Hollywood to take on the roles that he would've preferred himself. For Jack, he gained the world, but lost his star power.

Overshadowing Pitt's performance is Margot Robbie's Nellie LaRoy, a character seemingly written to fit Robbie's eccentric personality. Margot Robbie completely immerses herself in her roles to the point where she's unrecognizable as an actress, and she totally disappears into Nellie here. Unafraid to take big risks in her performances, Robbie dives head-first into anything Chazelle throws at her, including a tongue-in-cheek moment where she gets back at the culturally elite who insult her Jersey voice. At the start, Nellie was a firecracker with a spark that couldn't be denied, as she confidently entered a Hollywood party even though she never had an acting role in her life, and used that spark to ignite her career in explosive ways. Yet as the silent era ended, her voice became something of a mockery (something that parallels a classic movie that Chazelle not-so-subtly mentions several times in this film: "Singing in the Rain") and Manny tells her that if she wants to survive she has to adapt - which in turn means she looses her spark of originality. So for Nellie, she also gained the world, but lost her spark in the process.

Then there's Diego Calva, who bursts into the big screen in his first major role as Manny Torres, a choice that Chazelle chose on purpose to give the audience someone to root for that we don't already know. He's the character that most of us are in real life: we want to work in the "biz," and Manny stops at nothing to make his dream come true. While at the start of the film he's all heart and smarts, as his own stock rises in the Hollywood industry, he looses that sense of innocence that was once associated with him, rendering him a shell of a man that he once knew. So while he achieved his dreams, it was at the cost of his soul.

"Babylon" is one of those rare films that aren't made much anymore because they're "too dangerous" for moviegoing audiences to enjoy. It's not a three-hour superhero spectacle, but rather a three-hour nosedive into the depths of depravity that, while offering a glimmer of hope of a happy ending, doesn't fully provide that. What it does provide is an unflinching look at the churning Hollywood machine, where you're on top of the world one moment and merely a mention the next, where dreams go to die and hopes go to get dashed. Yet, it still offers the tantalizing carrot that's unmistakably tempting, and will keep drawing wannabe starlets in for decades and decades to come.

The Score: A+