Babylon: A Love Letter and Death Threat to Early Hollywood
Babylon is a beautiful mess. I saw a sense of ambition and grandiose excess even in the first shot. With his artistic choices, Damien Chazelle has a sensitive touch that draws the viewer in. The turmoil, humor and bombast of 1920s Hollywood are shown in a thrilling, physically unsettling manner by Chazelle, who also uses an extreme tactic to astonish the audience.
An elephant defecates head-on in the fifth minute. Two men are completely soiled. The brown soup splashes onto the camera’s lens, sticks there and it bubbles and bubbles. Less than 10 minutes later, a naked, severely obese man has his upper body peed on. Later on, there is a lot of puking. It was absolute chaos.
Somehow, it has to be like that. I haven’t been yelled at so often from a movie for a long time. The actors trip over each other in fear, small and large glitches are constantly occurring on sets and in the lives of the characters, and everything escalates up to the final punch line of the respective scene, which rarely or never ignites.
It reminded me of Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness; an exaggerated metaphor for the greed of the rich. With Chazelle’s, however, the endless excesses seem unmotivated because there is a lack of bite and satirical class. Every second is filled with utter mayhem, but despite the absurdities, everyone involved yearns for something more and bigger.
One of the most interesting hallmarks of Hollywood is its duality: how can such cruel and repulsive individuals collaborate to create such great pieces of art? Babylon provides us with this question: how can so much beauty come out of so much filth?
When I call this movie a “death threat”, I mean there is absolutely nothing good in the Hollywood that Chazelle portrays. They are all bad, cynical, corrupt and perverts. And a “love letter” is the outcome of it all; moving pictures which will impact the future of filmmaking so much despite its behind-the-scenes mess.
If you are a film lover, you are aware of the basic story of the transition from silent era to sound, as well as how the influence of talkies altered Hollywood’s dynamic for all time. Although Chazelle doesn’t bring anything new to the story, his main purpose is engaging despite his lack of subtlety.
Prior to the development of talkies, Hollywood was chaotic and raucous. Those behind the camera grew more silent and reserved as talkies and human voice were broadcasted on films and televisions.
Although Singin’ in the Rain is prominently referenced, we can clearly sense the influence of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights dominating the backdrop. The larger technological change that threatens to uproot and scatter the world is the central theme in both films; in much the same way that PTA suggested that the transition from film to videotape was ultimately more of a disruption than an innovation for the porn industry. Babylon’s portrayal of the silent era crashing into the talkies was similar to a kind of artistic suicide pill.
I can’t help but think how brilliant Damien Chazelle is. Technically, he has a complete understanding of everything. He is adept at controlling every tracking shot, sweep, rhythmic montage, and depth of field. He is skilled at shooting in both enclosed and open areas. He is skilled at filming two-person interactions and giving them a cinematic quality. He is aware of when it is appropriate to use a zoom and when to submit himself to the camera in his hand. A huge benefit of being a musician, as if that weren’t enough, Chazelle possesses taste, style, and a grasp of tempos and rhythms. He is aware of his preferences and of what works and what doesn’t.
Margot Robbie demonstrates for the thousandth time that she has a great acting gift. She dominates every moment with a remarkable sensitivity that draws us in and shows Nellie’s determined and tormented inner existence. At the same time, she manages to be seductive, frantic, passionate, compassionate and bold.
Diego Calva, as Manny, plays a character with a searing amount of empathy and desire, matching Robbie’s intensity. I didn’t know what to expect from him and I ended up liking him completely. He is an absolute knockout.
Brad Pitt is not far behind. As we already saw in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he works very well alongside Margot Robbie.
Chazelle is aware that despite the fact that the characters are not the most likeable in the world, there is something about all this overflow that compels you to follow it through to the finish regardless of what really occurs. All of this is significant because it contributes to the language of cinema and to why people see movies on a big screen.
The big screen’s unique qualities are what produce these larger feelings of “total cinema,” which it in fact evokes. Chazelle is a virtuoso like few others in the world. At the very least, this is the film that most illustrates his expertise in that area that most.
After it’s over you will feel like you’ve been to one of the parties in the film. And just like those parties, it is sometimes messily put together and didn’t quite know when to end before it got too exhausting.
Babylon might be an understandably baffling experience since it is self-indulgent, overlong, filled with unnecessary characters and scenes. However, I was mesmerized by the lovely chaos of it all. So fun when it works. Insane in the best ways.
