Monday 23 January 2023

Review: Babylon


Babylon
Cert: 18 / 189 mins / Dir. Damien Chazelle / Trailer

Roll-up roll-up then - if you will - for a sizzling period-piece epic from a celebrated, eclectic auteur of a film-maker; an arch, blistering love-letter to Hollywood starring Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt, where everything happens all the time for three hours but without a coherent central narrative. Again. Welcome indeed, to Babylon...

A sprawling tale of path-crossing and deal-making in the golden age of cinema, writer/director Damien Chazelle seems to have been at something of an impasse over what genre he wanted this to occupy, and has instead gone for 'as many as possible, please'. Comedy meets drama meets high-camp head on, and even horror waits to be found in Los Angeles' seedy underbelly.


WEAVING


Taking the concept of all-star casting to admirable levels, the film spends its time weaving between the intersecting lives of jaded heartthrob Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), rising starlet Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) and aspiring producer Manuel Torres (Diego Calva). All the people they all meet over the next five years seem to be included here, played by a sea of familiar names and faces all happy to blag their 15 seconds onstage at this party. Beginning at the end of the silent-film era in 1926, Babylon's own excess earns that 18 certificate (no mean feat for a non-horror piece in 2022), some of it necessary for the story but most of it not.

To his absolute credit, Chazelle is a master of note-perfect, gloriously long takes, showing off not only the skill of his cast but also a tight reign over rehearsal and production discipline. One of the funniest segments centres around Nellie trying time after time to nail the perfect take of a very simple scene, channelling Alden Ehrenreich's turn in Hail Caesar but no less endearing for that. It's also one of the only parts of the film with any sense of form.


BOSS


Obviously Chazelle has merely created the illusion of 189 minutes of self-indulgent chaos, but that doesn't make the final product any more orderly (the lone title-card arrives over half an hour into the movie for approximately no reason). Visually sumptuous, technically stunning, narratively desolate and morally agnostic, this is a three hour Rorschach test; the cave on Dagobah, with glitter.

Packed to the rafters - again - with subtle references, direct references, themes and actual lifted plot points of his favourite film, I fear that if someone doesn't let Chazelle just remake Singin' In The Rain he may very well expire*1, although ironically this is perhaps closer in overall tone to De Palma's Scarface. For clarity, none of it is overtly bad, in the same way that watching a kid play happily with all of their toys at once brings a smile to the face. But only one of you is actually having fun.


ICE ICE


On occasion, this film thinks it has something meaningful to say about artistic yearning and the darker side of showbusiness. It doesn't*2. Babylon is mawkish and manipulative, full of straw-man arguments for hypothetical dinner parties, with Chazelle scripting as if he not only holds the answers but has also been the first to come up with the questions. As a result, this really is a film for audiences who think that explaining artifice is the same thing as telling truth.

And yeah, points are coming off because it ends with a greatest-hits reel of its own first act. Nailed-on celluloid onanism.


In his labour of cinematic love, Damien Chazelle may well have captured the very soul of tinseltown; Babylon is engaging, exciting, eviscerating, and even by the time the end-credits start to roll it means absolutely nothing...

Perhaps that's the real lesson.


And if I HAD to put a number on it…




*1 Spoilers, highlight to read: Look, I'm as much of a fanboy of the Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly classic as everyone else in here - really, I am - but the first two and a half hours of Babylon are a hyperactive retooling of Singin' In The Rain, then the final 30 minutes are the main character literally sitting in a cinema and watching Singin' In The Rain and crying at all of the sequences that have been ham-fistedly referenced earlier. This might as well feature Chazelle walking past the bottom of the screen holding a placard which reads 'do you understand yet? It is this. I want to make this'.

Oh, and that meta-flash-forward at the end where Manuel imagines visions of iconic cinema yet to come, intercut with clips of the greatest films of all time (plus Avatar)? I notice you couldn't get the rights to Star Wars, Damien...
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*2 For the record, I genuinely believe there are points to be made about art vs entertainment vs consumerism, the intersections between the three and when it is and isn't helpful to define them. And for the record I genuinely believe that this movie hits precisely none of those marks... [ BACK ]

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• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
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