BABYLON
***
Director: Damien Chazelle
Screenplay: Damien Chazelle
Principal cast:
Brad Pitt
Margot Robbie
Diego Calva
Jean Smart
Jovan Adepo
Li Jun Li
Country: USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 189 mins.
Australian release date: 19 January 2023.
Damien Chazelle, the acclaimed director of Whiplash, La La Land (for which he won the Oscar for Best Direction) and First Man, returns with his most ambitious project yet, Babylon, a sprawling, three-hour plus extravaganza looking back at the early days of the Hollywood film industry when the movies were transitioning from silents to talkies. It’s set in the period 1926 to 1932, before the Hays Code enforcing studio self-censorship was introduced, a time when drugs, drink and debauchery were all the rage and depravity was okay, too, as long as it was kept out of the papers. Chazelle says, “The reality is that these people were operating in a no-holds-barred kind of world where an entire industry and city were being built from the ground up, and that takes a certain kind of madness.” It’s a big, rambunctious film which he directs from his own script and it was a big ask to successfully pull it off. Regrettably, this time, the filmmaker has bitten off more than he can chew; while it’s a sumptuous visual treat, with some great performances, this love/hate letter to Hollywood fails to engage on a deeper, more emotional level.
Babylon follows four main characters. There’s Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), a massive star of silent movies battling to make the transition to talkies, Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a Mexican immigrant looking for something bigger in his life, Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a girl from New Jersey convinced she’s destined for stardom, and Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), an African-American trumpet player and band leader. The lives of these four individuals cross paths and begin to intertwine at a bacchanalia in Bel Air hosted by studio head Don Wallach (Jeff Garlin) in a scene that feels like it’s part of a Baz Luhrmann-helmed movie about Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon exposés. There’s a lot going on – best not take your grandma! Surrounding these figures are various industry types and their hangers-on and fellow travellers, people like gossip columnist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), lesbian cabaret singer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), Jack’s sounding-board and best friend George Munn (Lukas Haas), and mob boss James McKay (Tobey Maguire), plus many, many more. There’s a veritable ‘cast of thousands.’ Suffice to say, despite their common belief that a movie set is “the most magical place in the world”, almost no one achieves their dreams – and if they do, the fairy dust doesn’t last long. It has ever been thus – the streets of Hollywood have always been littered with broken dreams and Babylon shows how the industry has been chewing people up and spitting them out since day one.
The writer/director had been thinking about making his film for 15 years or so before he put pen to paper. “I wanted to look under the microscope at the early days of an art form and an industry, when both were still finding their footing and, on a deeper level, I liked the idea of looking at a society in change. Hollywood underwent a series of rapid and at times seemingly-cataclysmic changes in the 20’s, and some people survived, but many didn’t,” he says. To bring his opus to life, Chazelle assembled a crew involving a trio of Oscar-winning creatives with whom he’d worked before, Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren (who shot La La Land and First Man), editor Tom Cross (Whiplash, La La Land and First Man) and Justin Hurwitz (also Whiplash, La La Land and First Man), and it’s a strategy that paid off, technically at least. Babylon looks great, has terrific energy and a wonderful, jazzy score. It’s just a shame that his screenplay ventures into cliché territory a little too often and, as a result, we don’t care as much about the fates of Jack, Manny, Nellie and Sidney as we should have.
Screenplay: Damien Chazelle
Principal cast:
Brad Pitt
Margot Robbie
Diego Calva
Jean Smart
Jovan Adepo
Li Jun Li
Country: USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 189 mins.
Australian release date: 19 January 2023.
Damien Chazelle, the acclaimed director of Whiplash, La La Land (for which he won the Oscar for Best Direction) and First Man, returns with his most ambitious project yet, Babylon, a sprawling, three-hour plus extravaganza looking back at the early days of the Hollywood film industry when the movies were transitioning from silents to talkies. It’s set in the period 1926 to 1932, before the Hays Code enforcing studio self-censorship was introduced, a time when drugs, drink and debauchery were all the rage and depravity was okay, too, as long as it was kept out of the papers. Chazelle says, “The reality is that these people were operating in a no-holds-barred kind of world where an entire industry and city were being built from the ground up, and that takes a certain kind of madness.” It’s a big, rambunctious film which he directs from his own script and it was a big ask to successfully pull it off. Regrettably, this time, the filmmaker has bitten off more than he can chew; while it’s a sumptuous visual treat, with some great performances, this love/hate letter to Hollywood fails to engage on a deeper, more emotional level.
Babylon follows four main characters. There’s Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), a massive star of silent movies battling to make the transition to talkies, Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a Mexican immigrant looking for something bigger in his life, Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a girl from New Jersey convinced she’s destined for stardom, and Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), an African-American trumpet player and band leader. The lives of these four individuals cross paths and begin to intertwine at a bacchanalia in Bel Air hosted by studio head Don Wallach (Jeff Garlin) in a scene that feels like it’s part of a Baz Luhrmann-helmed movie about Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon exposés. There’s a lot going on – best not take your grandma! Surrounding these figures are various industry types and their hangers-on and fellow travellers, people like gossip columnist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), lesbian cabaret singer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), Jack’s sounding-board and best friend George Munn (Lukas Haas), and mob boss James McKay (Tobey Maguire), plus many, many more. There’s a veritable ‘cast of thousands.’ Suffice to say, despite their common belief that a movie set is “the most magical place in the world”, almost no one achieves their dreams – and if they do, the fairy dust doesn’t last long. It has ever been thus – the streets of Hollywood have always been littered with broken dreams and Babylon shows how the industry has been chewing people up and spitting them out since day one.
The writer/director had been thinking about making his film for 15 years or so before he put pen to paper. “I wanted to look under the microscope at the early days of an art form and an industry, when both were still finding their footing and, on a deeper level, I liked the idea of looking at a society in change. Hollywood underwent a series of rapid and at times seemingly-cataclysmic changes in the 20’s, and some people survived, but many didn’t,” he says. To bring his opus to life, Chazelle assembled a crew involving a trio of Oscar-winning creatives with whom he’d worked before, Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren (who shot La La Land and First Man), editor Tom Cross (Whiplash, La La Land and First Man) and Justin Hurwitz (also Whiplash, La La Land and First Man), and it’s a strategy that paid off, technically at least. Babylon looks great, has terrific energy and a wonderful, jazzy score. It’s just a shame that his screenplay ventures into cliché territory a little too often and, as a result, we don’t care as much about the fates of Jack, Manny, Nellie and Sidney as we should have.
