It’s a tale as old as Hollywood—a fading star, a rising ingénue, and the wunderkind finding their way in an ever-evolving industry. Hollywood is very proud of itself, and most of the films celebrating it are cheery, fun, and engaging with the possible hint of tragedy. Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is something more akin to a backhanded compliment. It’s a big, gonzo tale of epic proportions that somehow still finds magic in Hollywoodland.
Like other Odes to Hollywood’s glory days, Babylon unfurls over a few decades. It traces the fall of Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), a one time big deal whose star power is dwindling; the rise of Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a self-proclaimed star seeking her moment; and the success of Manny Torres (Diego Calva), an assistant who finds himself moving up the Hollywood ladder. Unlike other similar stories (Singing in the Rain, The Artist), Babylon revels in the seedy, torrid behind-the-scenes moments that established Los Angeles as a mythical land of excess and hedonism, a Hollywood Babylon—if you will.
In fact, Babylon seems to share many elements with Kenneth Angers’ Hollywood Babylon. Angers’ book highlighted the raunchy, drug-fueled, X-rated underpinnings of Hollywood’s most notable stars. And, though often debunked, these stories have become long-running Hollywood urban legends. None of those stars are here. In fact, Jack, Nellie, and Manny are composites of stars of the time—Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable, etc. While a handful of real life names do show up at times, they’re never the focal point. Chazelle takes the gossip surrounding those Hollywood muses and exploits it for his own spectacle. This is the atmosphere and feeling that Damien Chazelle brings to life in his 3-hour epic.
The La La Land director’s return to Hollywood is much more pessimistic. He throws a lot of frustrations with the biz and the process onto the screen through this fictionalized recounting of Old Hollywood’s seedy underbelly. And while it seems to end on something of a bizarrely optimistic note, it’s hard to find that thread among the vomit, excrement, and discarded inhibitions that fill the 3 hours preceding it. Babylon is go-for-broke gonzo. And it lets you know its intentions within the first few moments as Manny attempts to transport an elephant to a party. It’s The Artist by way of The Wolf of Wall Street.
The first 30-45 minutes take place at what is a party for some, a hellscape for others, and an orgy for the extras. It’s at this hedonistic exercise that we first meet Pitt’s Jack Conrad. Jack is already tired and seemingly already on the final legs of his latest marriage. While Jack flirts with a waitress, Calva’s Manny is also running around delivering elephants and attempting to clean up a potential crime scene. It is in the middle of this exercise that he meets Robbie’s Nellie. Nellie starts the evening doing lines of coke in a store room and ends it playing poker with the boys—all the while prophesying her movie star future. This party sequence is extended, chaotic, and ultimately engaging—it’s a car wreck where the potential for additional car wrecks is extremely high.
Chazelle manages to capture this anarchy with ease. And he brings in his frequent collaborating partner Justin Hurwitz to lay down the high-octane jazz score that reinforces the madness of what we’re being exposed to. It’s a dynamite score that should surprise absolutely nobody. It’s frenetic, kinetic, and high-strung, much like our characters. Chazelle doubles down on excess and exploitation in a story that is not short. This 3 hour story is a LOT of movie—and is another in a slew of 2022 releases that reach or exceed 180 minutes (The Batman, Wakanda Forever, Tár, and Avatar: The Way of Water).
And there is a lot to take in, with three main storylines and a few additional subplots. Many times, these stories interlock. Manny’s rise is initially tied to Jack, and he and Nellie come in and out of each other’s lives through the years. There’s also a gossip reporter played by Jean Smart (Hacks, Mare of Easttown), and Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), an African American trumpeter who finds himself a star once sound makes its way to the silver screen.
And while I didn’t hate the runtime, the episodic, through-the-years nature of the narrative can greatly impact the momentum of the story. For some, it will be too bloated. And I get it. It’s a LOT OF MOVIE™. At the end of the day though, this is going to be for a select group of people, and I anticipate it will become something of a cult classic in the coming years. I don’t know if commercial audiences will be on board from start to finish, and many critics have already picked it apart. But, there’s some sort of magical hysteria here that will pull certain audiences in and latch onto their brain. That’s the pervasive power of cinema. Chazelle understands that, and Babylon is at times a morality play and at others a pining for a different time in Hollywood. It’s a mess—but I think I like it.
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Arthur is a creator of content, lover of movies, and father of dogs. If you want to keep the conversation going, then click here to follow Arthur on Twitter. If you would like to keep up with what Arthur is watching, then head over to Letterboxd and give him a follow!
