Damien Chazelle’s Babylon begins with a rip-roaring 20s Hollywood party. An extravagant set-piece that ultimately sums up Chazelle’s sprawling epic.
Think of it like this – The party starts at an electric pace. You’re so caught up in everything that time absolutely flies by with one memorable moment after another. Until, things are dying down a little. People are leaving, the music’s getting slower and so is the party.
Then with only the last dregs of party goers left, you’re cornered by that one guy that is so off-their-nut that they believe everything they’re saying is so profound, deep and meaningful, when in fact it’s just pretentious nonsense! After all is said and done, you have a terrible hangover the next day but you can’t stop reliving memories from the night before.
It’s a stretch of an analogy, but one that captures the experience of watching Babylon in a nutshell.
Damien Chazelle’s follow up to Whiplash and La La Land is an indulgent, entertaining look at the lives of a handful of characters during Hollywood’s heyday and the period of transition between silent film and ‘talkies’.
It seemed Babylon was destined for awards and critical success, but that hasn’t been the case. With a rotten 56% on Rotten Tomatoes and a flop of a box office run, not even the Academy, who usually swoon over such Hollywood period-piece epics, were that interested.
Babylon is a mix of Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Scorsese’s The Wolf Wall Street to put it simply. The film clearly takes cues from both and even the work of Paul Thomas Anderson in Boogie Nights. But it still remains unique in its morally grey depiction of the industry and how easily it can chew up and spit out those who were once on top to make way for the next ‘big thing’. Babylon moves at a brisk pace, which is needed in a three hour runtime, keeping you engaged with (mostly) likeable characters, impressive cinematography, entertaining set-pieces and a toe-tapping score.
I think it’s pointless to acknowledge how good the acting is here, because with a cast list stacked with names like Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt and Tobey Maguire, you expect them all to be great, and they are! However special credit has to go to Diego Calva, who plays the protagonist Manny Torres. Considering I’ve never heard or seen of him anywhere else, his performance was really impressive considering the star studded names surrounding him.
Another special mention has to go to composer Justin Hurwitz, whose work on both Whiplash and La La Land was equally fantastic, but here he really shines. Recurring motifs that will stick in your head for days. Sweeping orchestral pieces accompany the wildly energetic party scenes and some wonderful little jazz numbers are peppered throughout. It is a brilliant score and really elevates the emotion of a scene.
Then we get to the ending. Without spoiling too much, the last scene is a truly baffling filmmaking choice. The film attempts to hammer home the message of the “magic of cinema!” which at this point, has been done to death and could clearly be interpreted from the rest of the film, with a pointless montage of scenes we’d just sat through along with random footage of films past and present. It’s honestly one of the strangest endings I’ve seen, that really left a bad taste as the credits rolled.
Overall, Babylon is an entertaining and chaotic journey through early Hollywood and the depravity, joy and misery that came with it. Full of great sequences, acting and music, but an unfocussed second half and a strange ending leave you wanting more from a filmmaker that has made some of the best films of the last decade.
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