In just two weeks of theatrical release, Damien Chazelle's epic period piece about the silent film era, BABYLON, has become the most fiercely polarizing and divisive piece of cinema of 2022. If anything, its reception has been mostly underwhelming, and its performance at the box office, frankly, abysmal.
As a huge fan of Chazelle's previous work, Babylon has long-been a movie I have anticipated. Due to the initial critical reviews, as well as the depressing box office numbers, I walked into the theater with a feeling of uncertainty. By the time I walked out, plastered on my face was a smile. Simply, I was smiling with the joy of having watched the film. For that alone, Babylon deserves my praise, but for everything else the movie has to offer, my praise is lovingly granted.
BABYLON - A FUTURE CULT CLASSIC
Babylon is a cinematic experience like no other this year. Heck, it's an experience like almost no other this century. It's a lightning bolt of a film - a hectic, chaotic, yet still poignant escapade that slaps you by the wrist and firmly holds on until the final frame. It's brave, audacious, and hugely provocative, but ultimately, it's the movie cinema needs now more than ever.
On a technical level, there's not much even the film's most passionate detractors can take away from it. Beautifully shot, supremely scored, whilst also featuring this year's best costume and set design, it's hard to not become completely immersed in Babylon's blazingly unique take on the 1920's - 1930's film industry. On a performance level, the 3-piece dramatic core of Diego Calva, Margot Robbie, and Brad Pitt outdo themselves, especially Robbie who, in my eyes, gives the performance of her career thus far.
Chazelle wastes no time lunging the viewer headfirst into the intense and debaucherous landscape that he has meticulously adapted for them. This is, admittedly, for both its benefit and detriment. The opening 20 minute party sequence is one of the most exquisitely edited, scored, and filmed stretches in the movie's entire 3 hour runtime. It does a great job of letting the viewer know that this depiction of Hollywood is gonna be more unsettling and depraved than they're used to seeing on the big screen. However, all in all, (basically) the first two scenes of the movie (if you know, you know) are by far the most disgusting and shock-value oriented scenes in the picture. They don't really add anything of value, narratively or thematically, considering Chazelle will spend the next 15 minutes elucidating on the depravity of the industry anyway.
Luckily, following those two questionable scenes, Babylon is very nearly flawless in my eyes, except for a little smudge here and there.
The one word I would describe the movie with is "crescendo". The character's journeys and the number of spectacular sequences in the film are like a flame on a stick of dynamite burning, burning, burning, until the inevitable bang, the climax, the resolve... whether that resolve is the flame suddenly burning out or the flame torching everything around it. It was not a movie I was expecting to keep me on the edge of my seat, but for 3 hours and 9 minutes, there I sat.
An interesting aspect of Babylon's release is the fact it's a part of the recent flood of Hollywood movies about Hollywood. It's a subgenre of dramas that critics usually adore. Just in the last few years, think of the critical success of movies like The Fabelmans, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, A Star Is Born, and even Chazelle's own La La Land. Babylon, despite being in the same subgenre as these great movies, stands out like a sore thumb when placed next to them. Babylon's unflinching and, at times, discomforting take on the industry is unlike anything I've ever seen, but most closely resembles David Lynch's Mulholland Drive if anything.
Babylon is at its core, a story of ugliness and beauty coexisting in the same space. It's a scathing critique of the culture and system of Hollywood but one of the most poignant and honest love letters to the art-form of cinema I've ever seen.
A far-cry from the magical and glamorous look at the industry seen in most movies about the subject, Babylon knocks Hollywood off its gold pedestal and exposes the seedy underbelly of its sparkly covering. No scene personifies this idea like the absolutely terrifying and riveting sequence where mob boss James McKay, played with absolutely scene-chewing perfection by the excellent Tobey Maguire, leads Calva's Manny into what he calls "the a**hole of L. A": a nightmare-inducing underground Hollywood party that acts as a metaphor for the darkness of the industry itself. In this party is depravity, hedonism, exploitation, and immorality to the furthest extent. Maguire's McKay simply sees it as "fun" and a "good time". Each floor you go down in this party reveals even more debauchery until they get to the main act at the bottom. There is a large man who is chained up and exploited. Notably, he "will do anything for money". Sound like any of our characters? Is this underground hellhole beginning to sound like the dark version of Hollywood Babylon presents to us? Full of exploitation, bigotry, and disregard for basic moral goodness.
The concept of Hollywood masquerading its own degeneracy is cleverly represented in the opening party sequence where, to distract the partygoers from noticing the body of an overdosed teenager, they, ironically, put an elephant in the room to distract from the real elephant in the room.
In the book of the Bible, the city of Babylon is known as the city of sin. By titling the picture this, Chazelle directly connects Hollywood to wrongdoing and sin. However, this biblical allusion is also connected to the character's journeys. In the bible, the Babylonians famously try to build a tower to Heaven (the Tower of Babel). Of course, they never reach Heaven, because access to Heaven can only be granted by God. For this, the Babylonians are ultimately punished for their blasphemy and attempt to attain divine dominion on their own terms, rather than on God's. The overall thematic arc of Babylon mirrors this story, but as it applies to art and cinema itself.
At the beginning of the film, all of the main characters share the same goal of "doing something bigger". Thus, they chase the dream of becoming powerful movie stars, producers, or musicians and begin building to reach their personal idea of Heaven. However, their tower is not built on the love of the art. It's built on self-aggrandizement, excess, and moral decadence to achieve the escapism, stimulation, love, and praise they desire. The tower keeps them at the top for only a little, but eventually it comes crashing down. Robbie's Nellie LaRoy is egotistical, obsessed with quick thrills and stimulation, and wants to do things on her terms always, no matter the treachery such a life requires. Pitt's Jack Conrad claims to care about the art and progress of cinema, but when it moves on without him, gone is his view that what he did in life mattered, and, to him, his existence becomes meaningless. Calva's Manny is chasing many of the same superficial things, but primarily chasing superficial love with a beautiful woman who doesn't even know what love is. Their climb to these factitious idealized versions of Heaven, fame, fortune, ect, are ultimately their downfalls. The characters in this story are the Babylonians, their misguided ambitions is their tower to Heaven, and the Higher Power that takes the tower down and punishes them is cinema and art itself.
Cinema is bigger than any one person and the industry will chew you up and spit you out if you don't realize that. Cinema lives forever. Art lives forever. People live and then they die. It's no coincidence that the only character who gets a happy ending is Jovan Adepo's Sidney Palmer who gets to live out his days happily playing jazz music at a small club, away from the exploitation and excess of the industry.
This message beautifully culminates in the film's touching final moments. Manny revisits Los Angeles with his family after many years away. He has been living a modest, average life. He goes into the movie theater and, after an audacious creative montage that should make any cinephile smile with glee, both the audience and Manny come to realize what Sidney Palmer and critic Elinor St. John (played by Jean Smart) had years before. The "something bigger" the characters were chasing wasn't a lifestyle. It was cinema itself. Manny finally realizes that, despite the horror that occurred, he, Nelly, and Conrad, achieved their overarching dream of doing something bigger by contributing to filmmaking. Now, when anyone watches a clip from one of their movies, they will "be alive again" and will "dance with angels and ghosts" forever.
Some critics have complained that the film's view of cinema is far too cynical, but I think, in its own way, it's kind of hopeful. It's not always pretty, but it's honest. The film simply rips the industry off its pedestal and simultaneously bolsters the art-form of cinema upwards. Thematically, despite the course and unflinching narrative of the movie, Babylon has the purest message about filmmaking I've ever seen on screen.
9.9 / 10.
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