Babylon

 

Babylon

Writer & Director – Damien Chazelle

2022, US

Stars – Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart

 

A “Look At Me!” film from the very start, but less obnoxious than Luhrmann and not quite as Music Video as Snyder. Bookended by a deliberate showiness at the beginning and a delusion of meaning at the end, there’s still a lot to like here. It would seem that those involved think of ‘Babylon’ as an important statement on cinema and the era it evokes – indeed, the title doesn’t suggest modesty – but the drama and flashiness aren’t original, just entertaining. It’s all the tropes in their best dress. Brad Pitt is initially in shit-eating-grin mode and Margot Robbie is one of those intolerable “troubled free spirit” whirlwind girls, but when the film settles and stops only showing off and the actors add nuance, they get to do sterling work. After all, these are great actors. Robbie’s bar-top dancing debut and her first foray into the talkies are great set pieces. But it’s Diego Calva that does the work that grounds the drama; you can see and care for the development of character in him most of all, from wide-eyed set flunky to someone who can manipulate even himself and his genuine niceness when his newfound career demands it.

 

There’s a hint of what ‘Blonde’ was on about, exploiting and devouring its own; impressive old-style hundreds of extras in the background; a horror diversion into a dungeon of freaks that proves again that the film is just running on tropes, however amusingly. And there is a Tobey Maguire in a maximum scary cameo. Even Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a time in Hollywood’ touches base with the reality of behind-the-scenes more credibly. The grit and destruction here is the Hollywood Dream kind.

 

 

So we end up with a montage namechecking films that broke technical moulds. It’s both an audacious and laughable montage, proclaiming a film student level of insight and emotional resonance. You may snort, “Really?” Critic Robbie Collins gives a most generous reading that Manny’s tears and smile are those of defeat and acceptance at a system that chews’em up and spits’em out; but that’s perhaps allowing it more than surface depth (it certainly didn’t strike me that way). For me, the most poignant scene, the one that made me think I was being told something real, is the moment where the black performer Sidney (Jovan Adepo) is persuaded to apply black face to be as dark as his band mates for the camera.

 

Otherwise, I was left wondering what I was meant to feel nostalgia for? A party that is half orgy? Reckless and dangerous film sets with no safety rules and rampant exploitation? Characters that are lushes and addicts and privileged bores at best and moral vacuums at worst? Decadence as the ultimate goal? It’s a charmless world, however hedonism is celebrated. Despite the many great scenes and moments, despite the cast doing solid work, despite always being entertaining and lush, the film’s nostalgia for a romanticised film era – one the Chazelle is too young to have experienced – ultimately seems muddled and false. It’s no way as genuinely troubling as his ‘Whiplash’ existentialism, asking, “What does it take to be an artist?”  

 

Entertaining but unconvincing.