‘Babylon’ Review: Forget About ‘La La Land,’ This is Damien Chazelle’s Masterpiece
In a world where it’s become increasingly difficult to make high-budget original stories, it is hard to understand how 37-year-old Damien Chazelle was given $80 million (speculated to even be $100 million) to make a 3-hour Hollywood-themed period piece. However, it might just have to be one of those mysteries that you say “thank you” for everyday and never question again.
Everything about Babylon — from the glamorous set design to the character performances to the cinematography — is seeped in decadence. The main opening scene pulls the audience along a wild night at an illustrious party in the Hollywood Hills. Right off the bat, it feels reminiscent of the now iconic opening dance sequence in La La Land. We’re swept into a 20-minute long take as the camera pans to party-goers indulging on vices, circles around a boisterous jazz band, and then whips to an elephant crashing onto the dance floor. The camera moves with powerful intentionality so that despite the jarring jumble of chaos, the party (and the film at large) feels grounded in Chazelle’s hands.
Not everyone feels as complimentary of Chazelle’s third studio film. Many critics have chalked it up as an unfocused and tangled mess with characters that lack depth. However, there is a difference between chaotic and confusing filmmaking and Chazelle’s ability to capture a period of Hollywood extravagance. He doesn’t dedicate a significant amount of time to Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) or even Manny Torres (Diego Calva) because none of them are the main character. The main character is Hollywood itself. Each actor’s role represents a trope in Hollywood’s history and, as such, are vessels for the greater themes of stardom, opulence, race, immigration, and love.
Babylon roots itself in the history of Hollywood in many ways, most notably through the movie musical Singin’ in the Rain. Singin’ in the Rain follows a few central characters in their transition from silent films to the “talkies.” As Babylon addresses the same transition, there are many influences and references to the 1952 film including a scene of Nellie LaRoy and her production team on a soundstage. This a complete spoof of the wonderfully comedic scene of Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) acting with sound for the first time.
Babylon’s connection with Singin’ in the Rain goes deeper than simple references. It surprises you by interjecting its characters into real Hollywood history. The careers of Nellie LaRoy and Jack Conrad become the stories that influence the making of Singin’ in the Rain. This dialectical relationship between these two films results in Singin’ in the Rain becoming required viewing for Babylon (and vice versa). It’s as if the two films do not work without each other. This a bold, egotistical move, one that shows Chazelle’s hand in terms of where he places his movies in film history. However, while this could be distasteful to some, I found it to not only be ambitious but downright entertaining.
In addition to Singin’ in the Rain, Babylon ties in more real life Hollywood references including Irving Thalberg (Max Minghella) and an almost blatant parody of the Austrian silent film director Erich von Stroheim (Spike Jonze). Thalberg, a young film producer and contributing writer to the 1934 Production Code, famously forced Stroheim to edit his 8-hour magnum-opus, Greed (1924), down to two-hours which all but ended the director’s career.
The final montage at the end of the film is a loud, flashy, and colorful firework finale spraying the audience with immense nostalgia and resolute pride in the accomplishments of cinema. It captures the work of many groundbreaking filmmakers and technology of the past from Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion to Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou to the iconic end card of a Godard film (“Fin de Cinema”) to the first use of CGI in Tron to the modern technological achievements made in Avatar. Each clip builds upon each other as film moves throughout time. The stars of the past, including those explored in Babylon, are integral to the breakthroughs of the future.
Godard’s “Fin de Cinema”
While the story is one that will appeal to many, Babylon is for the lovers of cinema. It strikes a feeling of pure passion and love for camera technology, the stories that are captured on-screen, the people in the industry who came before us and those who will come after.
The world created and explored in Babylon is long gone. Just in the span of the movie, the vibrant debauchery-filled house parties that opened the film are cast down into “the asshole of Los Angeles” as perverted, underground pleasure dungeons by the end of the film. The stars who once ruled the silent silver screen are made a mockery of or are forgotten altogether. The writers who believed themselves to be sophisticated film critics are boiled down to “gossip columnists” in their newspaper obituaries. It was an empire of naive confidence and pretty incredible art.
So, does Babylon suggest the death of cinema? Hardly. Our current conversations about the death of film have been recycled for decades. People preached the end of cinema during the integration of synchronized sound in the 1920s, the invention of television in 1927, the first use of broadcast syndication in the 1960s, the rise of blockbusters in the 1970s, the domination of superhero films in the 2010s and, now, during the shift to streaming. Faced with each industry change, cinema has proven to persevere. While things have progressed quite a bit since the Lumière brothers’ The Arrival of a Train (1896), we still have an immense desire to capture stories on screen.
Babylon celebrates film while criticizing the film industry. It is a pastiche of classic period pieces and an original examinational work of the many sides to Hollywood. It is Chazelle clearly improving upon his plastic Hollywood utopia in La La Land, and diving deeper into the beauty and horrors that reside in the City of Stars.
(Originally published December 26, 2022.)
