Directed by Damien Chazelle
Picturehouse, Liverpool
From 20th January 2023
Reviewed by Nick Daly
I bought a pint of IPA Lager before entering Screen 1 at FACT Picturehouse for Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. With a 3-hour running time, mixed reviews and mutterings of extreme scenes, apparently I was going to need it. Turns out, it was the perfect accompaniment.
If La La Land was Chazelle’s all singing, all dancing ode to Old Hollywood, then Babylon is the nightmarish mirror version of it. Its Gatsby-like party sequences, and there are many, play out like an X-rated version of La La Land’s musical numbers, as if Emma Stone had brought a bag of cocaine to one of the pool parties. Sure, La La Land deconstructed the Old Hollywood musical to unveil a darker, more realistic narrative within, but few can anticipate the murky depths Babylon ultimately finds itself in. To give an insight: a woman urinating in a man’s mouth and an elephant’s exploding anus is seen within the first ten minutes. Does that make it a better film? No. Does it make it a more interesting one? Maybe.
If you can find a plot within the scenes of excess, you realise Babylon is about Hollywood’s transition from silent films to ‘talkies’, and the casualties it takes along the way. Much like La La Land’s main characters, Margot Robbie’s Nelly and Diego Calva’s Manny are two people chasing dreams in Hollywood. Brad Pitt, meanwhile, is the established silent movie star Jack Conrad. When chance encounters land both Nellie and Manny on a film set, that’s when Babylon’s title card appears brazenly on the screen.
There’s times when Babylon almost feels like a pastiche of films before it. Its themes of 1920’s extravagance will evoke The Great Gatsby but also the drug-fuelled outrageousness of The Wolf of Wall Street. Nellie plays like a concoction of Robbie’s previous characters, combining the rising star nature of Sharon Tate with the chaotic quality of Harley Quinn, while there’s a hint of Aldo Raine from Inglourious Basterds in Pitt’s suit-wearing, occasional-Italian-speaking movie star. Olivia Wilde even manages to pop up, the director of Don’t Worry Darling and the last film I reviewed for Nerve. Margo seems to have become something of an iconic actress for this generation. She seems to be more convincing but also more fearless with each role she takes, which is admirable for an actress that could’ve easily coasted on her looks.
Yes, Babylon is another Hollywood film about Hollywood, but it’s infused with such a vitality that it surpasses navel-gazing to instead be wildly entertaining. While the drawn-out film set sequences in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood could be accused of self-indulgence, Chazelle’s trademark swipe cuts creates a frantic, kinetic energy that correlates perfectly with the stress and excitement of being on a film set. Babylon shows film sets in all their ridiculous glory; the countless retakes, the waiting around, the anxiety of “losing the light”. There’s a spectacular scene of a camera crew driving alongside a group of galloping horseback riders while a live orchestra plays the film’s soundtrack. If you’re the remotest fan of cinema and filmmaking, it’s hard to wipe the smile from your face.
If Babylon’s first half is the drug-fuelled party, then the second half is the horrific comedown. The exuberant highs of the first half are matched with equally bleak moments in the second half, as the characters struggle to adapt to a changing Hollywood. Perhaps I’ve been reading too many conspiracies, but when Tobey Maguire’s scene-stealing James McKay guides the characters to the “asshole of Los Angeles”, an underground Hollywood party that takes the film into horror territory, you wonder what Chazelle is trying to tell us.
I’m reminded of the conspiracy theory behind Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut, and the 24 minutes of missing footage that apparently exposes the secrets of Hollywood’s elite. I’ve wondered why Babylon has had no award season attention this year, in an industry that seems to like to award films about itself, and maybe the reason is because it sheds this dark cast.
Another downside is, as the film’s pace slows, we see the negative effects to the thrilling energy that came before. We see how it has been a flashy distraction to a plot that’s actually not very engaging. Chazelle’s stylisation and hyperactivity have seemed to keep the characters at arms length, causing an element of detachment. This is when we really start to feel the 3-hour running-time. For this reason, the story beats don’t hit as hard as they should, and it isn’t helped by how the age-old story of fading Hollywood stars is something we’ve all seen before.
Despite this, Babylon ends on a particular note that’s hard to ignore. Taking scriptwriter Robert KcKee’s advice of “wow them in the end, and you got hit,” like La La Land, the film’s final sequence is a celebration of cinema itself. In a montage that might catch you off guard, Chazelle attempts an exploration of cinema throughout time, from 1902’s A Trip to the Moon all the way to 2009’s Avatar. With an artistic, almost surreal concoction of sound and image, he attempts to convey the pinnacle moment when you watch a film and it changes something in you. It took me back to being a 13-year-old watching Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1, a film which ignited a passion for film that’s still with me in a sense to this day. The film’s exhilarating energy and boundless creative freedom is something that I seen glimpses of in Babylon.
It felt particularly special as I’ve noticed in myself an increasing disinterest in film as I’ve gotten older. Perhaps it’s the current landscape of cinema, changing rapidly just like the introduction of sound in film, and perhaps others are sensing it too. Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes have both released films this month, and both are set in the past with a personal ode to cinema too.
Maybe Babylon is the beginning of a re-ignition. It’s not perfect. It’s chaotic, dark, often brilliant but under-cooked and maybe a bit over-ambitious. You leave wondering whether you even liked it at all. Maybe that’s showbiz.