It would be hard to talk about director Damien Chazelle's new film about Hollywood 'Babylon' (2022) without comparing it to his other film about Hollywood 'La La Land' (2016), so I'm going to save myself the trouble and compare them. 'La La Land' is an Oscar winning musical/drama about achieving one's Hollywood dreams through a mixture of persistence and luck, it is a love letter to the movies and the film industry. 'Babylon' is a epic (some would say bloated) spectical of debauchery and striving in old Hollywood. It is a gaudy indictment, it is both critique and celebration, it is Oscar bait Hollywood self love merged with a seedy explotation film. It is, in its way, rather great. Perhaps greater then it's better recived predescor 'La La Land'.
The two movies are yin and yang, the other side of their respective coins, 'Babylon' is 'La La Lands' evil twin. That two such different takes on roughly the same subject matter could come from the mind of the same writer/director, and in such a short space of time, is indeed impressive. It is an understandably polarizing film. It is full of cliches and types. We have been here before. It is a condensation of 'A Star is Born', 'Singing in the Rain', 'Sunset Boulevard' and 'Boogie Nights'. It is excess, it is a disaster, it is a triumph. It is a journey through Hell. It is decadence, tragedy, and a little hope.
The viewing experience reminded me of the first time I saw Sam Peckinpah's notoriously violent 1969 western 'The Wild Bunch', I hated, loathed the first half hour, it was just too much, but by the end I was loving the flick. The wild Hollywood party which makes up this movies extended prolog, the films title dosen't appear on screen until after its over around 35 minutes in, I found to be uncomfortable, as is a good deal of what comes later.
The film covers a collection of characters, their ups and downs through the years that transitioned Hollywood from all silent to all talkie films (Chaplin excepted). There are well established types, the ageing leading man (Brad Pitt), the ambitious young ingenue (Margot Robbie), and less established ones, the Asian 'Jill of all trades' constantly reinventing herself (Li June Li), the black jazz musician in an awkward relationship with the industry (Jovan Adepo) , the film splits the difference on its earnest young go getter (Diago Calva) by making him Latino.
Robbie and Calva's characters meet at the party which opens the film, her crashing it and he working it. Their Hollywood dreams bond them, they promise to keep in touch. She is discovered at the party and is off to the fictional Kinoscope Studios, he endears himself to Pitt's character whose patronage lands him at the very real MGM.
As a movie nerd with a good knowldge of the era depicted I enjoyed the "inside baseball" aspects of the picture, like knowing who Irving Thalberg was, recognizing a depection of the inciting incident of the Fatty Arbuckle scandle, and a costuming choice for Ms. Robbie that is reminiscent of a fairly famous photograph of the actress Bessie Love. But there is much to the film that is more accessible for general audiences.
The movie covers themes of love and loss, dreams turning into nightmares, and how after grasping the big brass ring it can be hard to hold onto. There are stories within it that ask the question of how much someone would and should be willing to change or deny about themselves, and is that worth it to achieve the goal. There is sex, there is violence and there is substance abuse.
Pitt and Robbie give solid performances, but both very much within their established ranges. Calva does a good job as a sympathetic audiance surragate, with little in the way of movie experince he holds his own with the established players. Li June Li has a strong film presence and may be a genuine find. The supporting cast ranges from a now middle aged Lucas Haas to Flea of The Red Hot Chille Peppers. In keeping with the precident of 'The Fabelmans' we have another cameo part where an eccentric director plays an eccentric director, with Spike Jonez as a von Stroheim type.
The movie alternates between its various story line quite adeptly, everyone seems to be given their due and despite a more then three hour running time I was never bored. The film functions in many ways like a series of losley connected short films or vignettes. Stands out include a long day on various silent film sets, the difficulty of getting the sound right on a single scene in an early talkie, Margo Robbie's snake fight, and a sort of Dante's Inferno segment where Calva and a character known as 'The Count' take a tense journey with a disturbed Toby McGuire. There is also a monologue delivered by Jean Smart as a Hollywood gossip columnist that is both very good and manages to sum up the overriding message of the film, to the extent that it has one.
The film also includes a coda or epilogue set some years after the main events. Even the movies fans seem to be split on this, I was fine with most of this sequence, but there is a sort of tone shift at the very end which is kind of jarring and wants to have it both ways, I would have appricated something more understated.
'Babylon' is a flawed film, but an ambitious one. In less capable hands I could have hated this movie, but it really worked for me, Chazzell expertly played a tune I was receptive to, at times it seemed almost built for me. I get why those who didn't like it didn't like it, there are plenty of legitimate reasons, but for me this was **** a highlight of the film year.
