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: The Revenant

The Revenant
Cert: 15 / 156 mins / Dir. Alejandro Iñárritu / Trailer



Already generating more than its share of awards-buzz is Alejandro Iñárritu's The Revenant, the tale of a US frontier trapper who gets separated from his hunting party, attacked by a bear, attacked by a tribe of Native Americans and attacked by his own hunting party. It like a fairly arduous journey, and indeed it is. I've seen the trailer a lot recently, and I have to admit that it didn't really push any buttons for me other than the names involved. But the trailer only hints at the setting and the story, and its duration can't properly show off what the film is. Which is fantastic.

Credit where it's due (and the awards-panels of the media industry will no doubt observe this), Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy are on quite, quite magnificent form (even if Hardy goes Full Jeff Bridges™ and mumbles much of his dialogue). Both have become immensely talented actors, and I think we've still to see the best work from each of them. But what really makes the film so enjoyable*¹ is the collaboration between director Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. While it's not at the level of their previous outing Birdman's seamless-take presentation, The Revenant features some of the lengthiest and most complex continuous shots I've probably ever seen. Neither Iñárritu or Lubezki are afraid to use a single camera for a single take, while often showing the audience the full 360° of the surrounding landscape. This alone meant I sat grinning like an idiot for much of the film.

Although I really don't enjoy making the distinction, I think there's more in The Revenant for the film-fan than the movie-fan. The main narrative itself is well structured and relatively linear, but it's occasionally interwoven with dreams. hallucinations, and symbolism. While it's not exactly art-house, even the main thrust of The Revenant has a ponderous, often hypnotic quality that could well disappoint anyone sitting down hoping for a punchily-paced revenge tale of the Tarantino-school*².

But rest assured, the film's got the physicality when it needs it, too. Large stretches of the story are (necessarily) combat-based, and while Iñárritu doesn't revel in the gore of projectile and blade weapons, he certainly doesn't recoil from it, either. I've never known a collective audience audibly wince as much as they did during the film's climactic showdown.

An outstanding, if exhausting, piece of cinema, The Revenant is a hauntng and relentlessly bleak survival horror. A bit like an olden-days version of The Walking Dead but without any zombies, yet just as fraught with danger. Fantastic.

Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, Birdman.



For the cinematography alone, yes.



Undoubtedly.



No, but it's up there…



Probably not.



There's not, even though the number of arrows and horses in use means it's the perfect movie for one.



Level 1: The Revenant stars none other than General Hux himself, Domnhall Gleeson.

Oh, and let's just say there's "a Taun-Taun scene" in it, as well :P







*¹ Okay, maybe not enjoyable… satisfying?

*² Although I didn't rush out to question their reasons, there were a couple of walk-outs at my screening. On one hand, this was an Unlimited Card preview, so the patrons in question hadn't necessarily paid anything extra to be there and would feel less aggrieved at giving up on a movie. But on the other, I find card-holders to be generally more receptive to different genres and styles, since they've bought the subscription precisely because they love the cinema. Maybe it was just Tom's mumbling?

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.