Damien Chazelle can’t stop thinking about how hard it is to reach perfection. Whether it’s finding the perfect beat, going into space, or getting famous in Hollywood, the characters in his movies are willing to go through physical and emotional pain to get to the end. If “La La Land” was his wide-eyed, sentimental look at the movie machine, “Babylon” seems like a very deliberate response to the criticisms of that movie.
It’s a very expensive piece set in the 1920s, and it’s about how movies that look like magic are often the result of a lot of hard work, broken dreams, and luck. In “Babylon,” there are a number of scenes that show how much work goes into making just two seconds of film. For example, a field of dozens of extras sits around while a camera is found, and recording sound is hard because it needs to be perfect. Even though everything looks like a lot of fun, these two great scenes show us that none of it is easy.
Challenges of Bringing Great Scenes Together
Does it all add up? That’s a hard question to answer. Chazelle says that this version of landing on the moon is worth the trip, but to get there he puts his characters and the audience through so much misery that it’s hard to believe him. “Babylon” has a lot of great scenes, performances, and technical parts, but Chazelle doesn’t seem to have the magic touch he needs to bring them all together in an honest way.
There’s something to be said for a movie that doesn’t try to hide anything, but by the end of this one, I felt just as manipulated and fooled as the outsiders who get eaten up by the Hollywood machine. One could say that was on purpose because it’s rare for a Hollywood movie to make you feel bad, but that’s the difference between pulling back the curtain and rubbing your face in elephant poop.
And that’s how “Babylon” starts, introducing us to Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a Mexican American living in Los Angeles at the end of the silent film era. He’s trying to get an elephant to an insane Hollywood party full of drugs and sex that was only talked about in the gossip magazines of the time. Chazelle uses the orgiastic bacchanal to introduce his characters, including an aspiring actress named Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) whose star is about to rise and who catches Manny’s eye at the party. We also meet the smooth-talking Jack Conrad, who is played by Brad Pitt.
He is a silent film star who is about to leave his third wife and be hit by fame as talkies come into the picture and the wheel turns to a new era of stars. There’s a jazz trumpet player named Sidney, played by Jovan Adepo, and a cabaret singer named Lady Fay Zhu, whose part isn’t very well written (Li Jun Li). Elinor St. John, played by Jean Smart, is a gossip journalist who writes about all of this while famous people like Lukas Haas, Olivia Wilde, Spike Jonze, Jeff Garlin, and even Flea flirt around the story.
Chazelle’s Ambitious Tapestry Approach
It’s an unquestionably great cast, led by another fearless performance from Robbie and a star-making one from Calva, but Pitt is the standout, giving off a sense of lost glory that sometimes feels almost personal. Pitt has been a star for over 30 years, so he has seen legends like Jack Conrad come and go. He gives his performance a relatable melancholy that gives the whole movie depth that it could have used in a few more places.
Chazelle’s ambitious tapestry approach focuses on the rising arcs of the outsiders. Manny, Sidney, and Nellie don’t realize they’re part of a system that values them about as much as it values the equipment it needs to make movies (maybe less). Even the star Jack Conrad will find out that legends can be thrown away. All of them become powerful in their own way. Nellie holds the screen in a way that few actresses other than Robbie could do convincingly.
Sidney’s musical talent rises as sound replaces silent films. Manny is clearly one of the smarter people on set, which gives him more and more choices. Manny and Nellie have a love story that doesn’t go anywhere, but this movie is more about how much they love movies and Hollywood history than romance. It is also full of too much information about the history and urban legends. Chazelle did his homework, which is clear.
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Review of a Film with Technical Brilliance and a Cynical Tone
Again, it seems like the director’s dedication made his team of artists better. Linus Sandgren’s fluid camerawork gives the movie a lot of its momentum. His shots are never flashy, but they are always moving. The score by Justin Hurwitz might be the best of the year. It has recurring themes for the characters, which gives the whole thing a more operatic feel, which fits the dark tone and sad endings of the story.
The production design walks that fine line between being real and being bigger than life. The way the stories are cut together sometimes seems to get away from the great editor Tom Cross, but that’s more because Chazelle’s script isn’t always clear than anything the editor did.
Chazelle seems to be saying that we wouldn’t have “Singin’ in the Rain” if people didn’t die when silent movies turned into talkies. Isn’t it great that we did get that movie? That is a very cynical and shallow way to look at how movies are made. If he thinks he’s showing how broken an industry is, he ends up showing that he’s part of that broken system. It’s as if he doesn’t want to think about how his favorite art will hurt the people who love it as long as his wild party keeps going.
Final Words
Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” is a deliberate response to the criticisms of “La La Land” and shows how hard it is to reach perfection. “Babylon” is an ambitious tapestry approach that focuses on the rising arcs of outsiders, including Margot Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy, Diego Calva’s Manny Torres, and Brad Pitt’s Jack Conrad. Manny and Nellie’s love story is more about how much they love movies and Hollywood history than romance, and Chazelle’s dedication makes his team of artists better.
