Babylon

I recently read a biography of silent film "It Girl" actress Clara Bow. Margot Robbie, looking more like a Grace Kelly from a few decades later rather than a Bow, plays a character highly inspired. From her blue collar New Jersey upbringing, to a father following her to Hollywood and making money off her image (even opening a restaurant based on one of her famous movies), a gambling addiction, to an off-color joke at a hoity toity part - these are all inspired by Bow and her life.

The film is great as a love letter to Bow, warts and all, played magnificently by Margot Robbie, and just to the magic film can have on its audience, transcending time. It visually details the difficult transition had on the film industry with the transition from silent films to talkies, showcasing actors, producers, and musical performers adjusting to it all. Brad Pitt gives a great performance as a Douglas Fairbanks like silent star edging toward irrelevancy, but newcomer Diego Calva really steals a large part of the movie with his powerful performance.

Great music from Justin Horiwitz (who reunited with his La La Land/Whiplash director Damien Chazelle) with excellent cinematography and performances. However, the film was a bit much at time. Consistently frantic (lots of characters melting down and screaming) and/or stressful with excesses abounding, it was a little much at times. Certain scenes (such as an elephant having explosive diarrhea on a man) would have been better not seen so graphically.

Solid film. 8/10.

It's 1926 Hollywood. The silent movie era is having a party of epic debauchery. Manny Torres (Diego Calva) is the 'Mexican' fixer servant doing all the dirty jobs. Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) is the big movie star. Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) is the flamboyant nobody who fakes it until she makes it. She makes it and then the silent era ends. Everybody works to master the new sound era.

This is not an appealing start. I don't know what's happening with every Oscar bait movie which insists on an overly broad comedic scene with bodily functions. The elephant is completely overboard. I wouldn't open with that scene. It's an indication of what's to come. This movie is desperately trying too hard.

I guess we're supposed to root for Margot Robbie, but I don't. I find her abrasive and not always appealing. She does find her tragic heartbreaks and that helps her character. This would work better if it concentrated more on Brad Pitt's character. He has some of best heart-felt scenes during his climax. Manny Torres is probably the other main character with a big character arc. I like the character, but the performance is too stoic. I need a different performance from him.

Besides Brad Pitt's character arc, I love the general premise of redoing "Singin' in the Rain". It's a great premise that needs a little foreshadowing and less outrageousness. It could be a simple modern day revival with admiring fans watching "Singin' in the Rain" to open this movie. Damien Chazelle is just trying too hard. It hits a few false notes and the whole enterprise stumbles. It always gets back up with some very compelling scenes. For example, the first sound shot is fun. I don't like how it ends. Damien keeps pushing the comedy one step too far. I do appreciate the overall premise and the ambition of the work.

"Babylon" tracks the career of Manny Torres, an aspiring filmmaker from Mexico who crosses paths with fellow aspiring starlet Nelly LaRoy at a bacchanalian party one night in 1920s Los Angeles. The film also follows several other characters at the same party, including movie star Jack Conrad, cabaret performer Fay Zhu, tabloid journalist Elinor St. John, and musician Sidney Palmer, as each rise and fall in their respective careers spanning the end of silent films and the beginning of sound productions; each of the characters cross paths throughout as they navigate the shifting business of Hollywood.

This large-scale epic from Damien Chazelle is, in a word, ambitious, both in scope and mere technicality. It opens with an utterly ravishing, debaucherous party sequence that captures the maddening spirit of roaring twenties Hollywood, setting a visual bar that is fairly high. While there are a number of fantastic sequences throughout the film, this key party sequence where each of the characters are introduced/first intervene is, without a doubt, the highlight of the film. While its characters are fictional, the screenplay blends them in with passing names of real-life historical Hollywood figures, as well as thinly-veiled references to others.

Firstly, it almost goes without saying that "Babylon" is gorgeously photographed. The performances are also uniformly solid. Diego Calva is a likable presence as the centerpiece character, while Margot Robbie's portrayal of the brash and troubled Jersey girl flying by the seat of her pants is comical and poignant by turns. Brad Pitt fittingly plays the drunken but goodhearted movie star, and Jean Smart is also a welcome presence as the curt and astute gossip columnist, ostensibly based on Louella Parsons (or a writer of her ilk).

The film is consciously over the top, at many points capturing the madcap spirit of something the late Ken Russell would have directed. Its first three quarters are particularly outstanding, and demonstrate the realities (and technicalities) of how the transition from silent films to motion picture talkies posed legitimate, career-altering (or more often, career-destroying) challenges for nearly everyone who was part of the business. Chazelle projects this theme to the audience in one memorable and protracted sequence in which Robbie's character (along with the sound man) struggles, fails, is interrupted, and struggles again to perform a simple one-page scene. The nuts and bolts of these logistical challenges in a then-fledgling industry are perhaps the most intriguing components of the story, highlighting just how vastly different (and more arduous) the process was of making a sound picture for the actors and filmmakers accustomed to the established ways.

By the time it reaches its final act, however, the viewer does get the sense that the project is beginning to implode under its own weight to some degree; the focus on certain characters ebbs and flows, and the film begins to lose some steam. It is revived somewhat by an insane sequence in which Torres and another crew member of his film studio (in an attempt to save LaRoy from reckless gambling decisions) cross paths with an eccentric crime boss played by Tobey Maguire, and journey into a subterranean gathering place for the city's debaucherous denizens, who have literally gone underground following the more reserved moral code of the 1930s. The garish and ghoulish sequence feels like a tour of Dante's Inferno (probably quite intentionally), and is almost more madcap than the opening party sequence.

The film grinds to a somewhat abrupt halt as each of the characters' lives and careers face further significant devastation in the last thirty minutes, and the sense of tragedy that one might expect to feel is strangely absent, perhaps because these characters are in and of themselves larger than life, even cartoonish at times; still, I felt that there was an emotional core missing as their stories are resolved. The film ends on a profoundly cynical note, showing Hollywood as a place that metaphorically devours its own, only to be constantly replenished by the unending stream of those who make pilgrimage there, seeking to etch their mark in the tapestry of cinema. The observation is astute, and the implications are splashed across the screen in a century-spanning montage of snippets from the earliest films to contemporary ones.

All in all, "Babylon" has many strong points: Mainly its visuals, sturdy performances, and focus on the industrial realities of early filmmaking that most 21st-century viewers would take for granted. It eventually grows a bit long in the tooth into its third hour, and loses some tenacity, but not enough so that the film entirely collapses in on itself (though it comes close). If nothing else, it earns its keep as an ambitious and scabrous love (and hate) letter to cinema. 8/10.

Babylon is a long, messy, repulsive, and magnetic spectacle. Unfortunately despite the great performances and set pieces it doesn't live up to Chazelle's previous work.

The movie wants to bring you down into the waste yard that is Hollywood then pull you out to see the beauty that grows out of the trash. The problem is the movie spends so much time in the mud, and goes so deep into it that by the time it tries to pull you out at the end it's too late.

On the upside the cast are great and almost completely carry the movie, especially Margot Robbie's enthralling performance as Nellie. And as with Chazelle's previous work the set pieces are well executed and (some) characters are memorable.

However, these positives could not completely overcome the movie's fundamental flaws which are -- going too far with trying to revolt the audience (to the point of childishness), not spending enough time with the characters or important scenes despite its decadent runtime, and the ending coming off as completely pretentious in the context of how practical/cynical everything leading up to it was.

In the end, Babylon does serve its purpose as an entertaining spectacle, but like the Hollywood it critiques, its self-indulgence prevents it from achieving greatness.

...and I wish I could rate them separately. The first act of the film is a fast paced tale of innocence cast into a world of debauchery. It's a beautifully shot, fantastic tale showing the dramatized excesses of show business and the people who would do anything to gain entry into that world. 9/10

The second act was a somewhat more tame and methodical tale of the inner-workings of 1920's film production, with the standout scene being the "hello college" scene. Out of place however, was the whole tangent around the party leading up to the snake. While decidedly funny, I didn't like the pacing very much. 6/10

The final act was a tricky one, and probably could have been 30 minutes shorter. Despite absolutely loving Toby's character, the little side-quest they go on pushed to already exaggerated "Babylonian" theme to to a point of absurdity. It's obvious that some sort of narrative bridge was needed to set up the final scene, but I felt it was overdone. Pitt's character arc wasn't bad, but it lost a lot of steam and I honestly wouldn't have noticed if his character had only been mentioned in the pre-credits sequence. 4/10

If there is one strong point throughout the entire film, it's the use of the dueling saxophone score and quick cuts to drive home the manic energy present throughout the film. Without that score many of the slapstick-heavy scenes would have felt tiresome in an already very lengthy movie. I have a hard time recommending this film to any but the most serious of film nuts, but it's impossible to deny that the bones of a great story are here, they just needed to leave some of the fat on the cutting room floor.