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.

*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... [/End] ^{[ BACK ]}

*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 ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Queen & Slim

Queen & Slim
Cert: 15 / 132 mins / Dir. Melina Matsoukas / Trailer



Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya headline Queen & Slim, a crime thriller from screenwriter Lena Waithe*¹ and director Melina Matsoukas. In suburban Ohio, when young Afro-American couple Angela (Jodie-Smith) and Earnest (Kaluuya) are returning from their first date, a traffic-stop by a white patrol officer results in a bad turn of events turning much, much worse. The pair make a hasty decision to flee the scene, beginning a cautious bee-line to Florida in a bid to flee the country.

This is an odd movie, usually in a good way but it's tonally all over the place. The most meandering getaway you've ever seen passes through neighbourhoods of biting social drama, breath-holding tension and laugh-out-loud comedy alike. At some points these are structurally juxtaposed to suggest emotional pit-stops, although at others this feels like the scripts of two different movies have been filmed using the same cast.

Saved by committed performances all round, the film is quite remarkable. Although I'm deducting a point because it should have ended around six minutes earlier than it did*². Matsoukas aims for Off-Beat™ and in that regard Queen & Slim is a notable success, although perhaps more in the experiment itself than its conclusion...

Well Bonnie & Clyde is the most obvious touchstone, but since characters within the movie reference this I'm disallowing it. Think of The Hate U Give meets Blue Ruin meets the first half of From Dusk Till Dawn meets Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.

Yeah..



If you know you're already onboard, sure.



It is.



Let's not go mad here.



That's possible.



There isn't.



Level 2: Daniel Kaluuya is in this, and he was in that Black Panther alongside Lupita 'Kanata' Nyong'o, Sam 'Windu' Jackson and Andy 'Snoke' Serkis.





*¹ Credit where it's due, the story was developed between Waithe and James Frey. Oh yes, that James Frey. So while several high-profile moments in this thriller come off as frankly unbelievable, bear in mind they're probably from the guy who can't even get his own life-story right... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Spoilers - highlight-to-read: Mate, have the pair in the standoff on the runway, have them look at each other, have them look back in unison at the police then cut to the directed-by credit. That's how you end the movie, with ambiguity. As a point of discussion, of uncertainty, of hope. Because if you have to spend the final six minutes with slow-motion sequences telling your audience that white cops shooting unarmed black civilians is A Bad Thing, you've probably wasted the two hours before that...
^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.