As Babylon winds down to its end – a conclusion that manages to be both sentimental and ostentatious – it seems to be making a case for the end of movies. Or, more specifically, that the “end of movies” has always been around the corner, a frightening omen ready to attack at any moment. Throughout its history, the medium of movies has gotten several terminal diagnoses from the advent of television in the 1950’s to our current day post-COVID box office malaise. Babylon views Hollywood history as a long sequence of near death experiences – or maybe they’re actual deaths followed by stubborn resurrections. Either way, the latest film from Damien Chazelle wants to toe the line between basking in the glory of cinema and wallowing in its hedonistic depravities. Love it or hate it, you can’t deny the power of the movies. The same can’t be said for Babylon.
Chazelle – Oscar-winning director and noted jazz enthusiast – already has an auteur’s reputation despite being only thirty-seven years old. His penchant for high style and long, choreographed takes has garnered him attention as one of the best filmmakers of his generation. His breakout film, Whiplash, charted the frantic, sometimes dangerous, relationship between a music teacher and one of his students. It still seems like a miracle that a film that small could have such a thunderous impact, but Whiplash is a movie where the success lies mostly in the effectiveness of its finale. The same could be said for La La Land, the film for which he won his Best Director Oscar, which has some genuine moments before it greatest triumph occurs during an ending that speaks both to the film’s unapologetic sincerity while confidently tipping its hat to its cinematic influences.
In Babylon, Chazelle wants to harness that energy for a whole three hours. No more lulls of narrative place setting or moments of meditative character building. Nothing but full tilt capital F filmmaking from beginning to end. The film tells you early on just how committed it is to keeping its frenzied pace throughout, starting off with a truly outrageous party scene that takes up the film’s first thirty minutes. In the opening ten minutes, you see someone get shit on and pissed on, which is a clue that any classicism that Chazelle may have clung to in the past has gone straight out the window (for good measure, and to complete the trifecta, later in the film someone also gets projectile vomited on). This is his Wolf of Wall Street, but it’s also his Singin’ In The Rain, and the friction between those opposing forces is not something Babylon is ever able to overcome.
Chazelle’s script takes a hard-R approach to Singin’ In The Rain and tells it on a much larger scale. The story involves Hollywood’s transition from the undisciplined mania of silent pictures to the prestigious solidity of the talkies. Babylon‘s first half is a prolonged montage of hard-partying movie people soaking in the extravagance and luxury that the pictures have brought them. Beverly Hills mansions are filled with half-naked people doing drugs and drinking booze and indulging in studio-backed mayhem. Lots of extras having sex in the background in a scene are treated by characters with the mundanity of pretentious wall art. Manny (Diego Calva) is an outsider, a Mexican-born young man who does dirty work for an executive named Don Wallach (Jeff Garlin). Manny wants to break into the movie business, but hasn’t yet figured out how.
Another outsider is Nellie Leroy (Margot Robbie), a Jersey-born wannabe actress who bursts into one of Wallach’s parties with nothing but a scant, red one-piece and all the confidence in the world. Nellie walks into the room and immediately grabs the eyes of the hundreds of people around her. This includes Manny who falls in love at first sight. When chance gets Nellie her first big break on a movie set, she quickly becomes an audience favorite for her natural screen presence and ample sex appeal. Her explosive temper and cocaine habit win her no friends in the industry, but her rising star is set. Things don’t move as quickly for Manny, who first becomes an assistant for Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt). Jack is the ultimate insider, one of the biggest movie stars in the world. He shuffles through multiple divorces and a crippling drinking problem, but in front of the camera, his stardom is undeniable.
As Nellie’s success becomes more prolific and Manny climbs the ranks of Jack Conrad’s entourage, the two outsiders gain everything they always wanted, which of course leads to disillusionment and regret – the classic Hollywood tale of “be careful what you wish for”. The movie’s second half is the patented downfall, precipitated by the influx of sound films which leaves silent stars like Jack and Nellie without proper function (Nellie can’t overcome her Jersey girl accent, Jack can’t replicate his magnetism through dialogue). Meanwhile, the formerly innocent Manny learns the eternal lesson about what comes with ultimate power, as he becomes the perpetrator of the very exploitation that he used to be the victim of. The friends they make along the way – trumpet player Sydney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), cabaret singer and title card writer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), hapless film producer George Munn (Lukas Haas) – all meet a similar fate: a ferocious rise before a thunderous fall.
Those who have seen La La Land can vouch for Chazelle’s love for Los Angeles, and the sharp criticisms that he hurls at Hollywood throughout Babylon have a tinge of the personal. Perhaps its too personal, because Chazelle never gets properly outraged about the industry’s virulent racism or insidious misogyny, at least not mad enough to stop him from recycling it for handsomely-orchestrated camera sequences which attempt to capture the totality of the time’s insanity. His talent is inarguable, and you can spend most of Babylon in awe at the level of complication in Chazelle’s directorial vision, but this is not a director reel, it’s a feature film that aspires to be about something. The film abdicates any semblance of conviction in its supposed principles, and the film’s closing sequence – too absurd to talk about here – has a level of unexpected earnestness that feels absurd next to everything that came before it.
Robbie and Pitt are two movie stars and their casting is one of Babylon‘s bright spots. The parallel arc of their stories relies not only on their performances (which are both good, for what it’s worth), but their ability to convey the naturalness of their stardom. Babylon‘s flaws feel insurmountable, but that’s only because you can see the precision and expertise that lies underneath everything on the screen. The cinematic ambition falls victim to an extremely high variance on execution. This is easily my least favorite Damien Chazelle film. Its failures are failures of aspiration, but the manic anarchist tone is not one that suits him well. You’ll see a lot of Boogie Nights here, in addition to Wolf of Wall Street, which are two masterpieces of Bad Boy Cinema, a genre that requires a specific attitude that I’m not sure Chazelle possesses. It’s a little embarrassing to see him try.
Written and Directed by Damien Chazelle