Film Review: Babylon
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The year’s Most movie Babylon crashes into theaters this holiday season with all the aplomb of a splashy big budget studio picture and none of the nuance, storytelling verve, or consideration for the audience that would make it a good film. A three hour slog of a picture, Babylon is Damien Chazelle’s ode to the movies is all shock and no satisfaction.
Diego Calva’s Manny Torres is out entry into this tale of foolery and when we meet the man, he is trying like so many people of color in the industry to accomplish the impossible. In this case, he’s trying to get an elephant up a in in a car that can’t handle the load. He’s among a class that has to work a shitty job, and that’s before the elephant literally starts defecating on his compatriot and him to a lesser extend. This shot across the bow of good taste and decorum sets the stage for the film and only ramps up once they successfully get the elephant to a crazy party filled with all manner of person.
Upon chance Manny’s outside when Nellie LaRoy (a manic Margot Robbie) quite literally crashes into his life when she crashes into his life during this raucous party. There’s is an instant connection and they bond over shared dreams and shared cocaine. It is indeed a serendipitous night as Nellie gets a role on a film and Manny gets a job working for Jack (Brad Pitt), a big Hollywood actor. The movies move from silents to talkies and everything in between as it details how the world of movie making isn’t always the sweet way it’s portrayed in the pictures.
Damian Chazelle very much set out here to make a movie about movies and Hollywood. Much like this year’s The Fablemans, the movie finds it’s most interesting moments when it comes to the struggle and delight of making actual movies. However, the movie is so bloated that it also feels as though Damian knew he was treading familiar ground and needed the bombast of wild parties, illicit behavior, and gross moments to make this a movie worth making. Seeing people vomit on screen or an elephant shitting on someone or people fucking in the corner does little for this story other than to try and shock the audience and keep them awake through the slog of a run time. By the time you get to a terrifying trip with a gangster (Tobey Maguire in a phenomenal bit of supporting actor work) to an underground lair, you’re begging the movie to put the characters and you out of your misery. It’s a shame too because there are some truly stand out moments and rumination on Hollywood’s power for good and evil, particularly as it pertains to Brad Pitt’s Jack and Diego Calva’s Manny, whose working relationship anchors the movie. When the movie slows down to allow for those moments, the actors shine and it reveals the true heart of the picture.
It’s amazing that a director so detail oriented as Damien Chazelle would leave the audience wanting in the areas the movie needed the most, chiefly among its three protagonists of color. Hollywood may have been more…lets say free thinking in the time when it was figuring itself out, but 1920s and 1930s America was what it was. Indeed, there were non-white stars of this age. But their experiences are worthy of full exploration where as in Babylon they seem more like trees in the way of heavy machinery, and get trampled under the wheel of a movie more interested in the easy drama.
Li Jun Li gives arguably the movie’s greatest performance as the Lady Fay Zhu, a lesbian cabaret singer whose backstory isn’t so much presented as sprinkled in the finest doses. Li Jun Li is as magnetic as they come and it’s a testament to the performance that she rises above what does not feel like much outside of her identities. But she’s an incredibly giving scene partner, her reactions opposite her fellow actors do manage to make all her scenes watchable. I just wish she was able to be more active in the story rather than moved into place when others needed her to be there.
Sidney (Jovan Adepo) gets perhaps the weirdest edit of anyone in the film. He’s playing a man we know little to nothing about and only briefly experience his home life and a few moments of dialogue where he berates a fellow band mate about playing flat. Suddenly, he’s getting a picture deal to play with a band and a nice house and car. But before long he finds himself dealing
He’s involved in one of the movie’s most shocking, yet emotionally impactful scenes and yet, I struggled to summon up anything but anger at the fact that I was going to have to watch a Black man need to put charcoal on his face with a movie that didn’t deign to give him meaningful screen time and characteristics prior to that. It is but a moment in the movie, placed there so he can show something that likely happened, but not take the time to deal with the ramifications for the character or the audience you’ve put through.
Even Diego Calva, who gives a truly excellent performance as Manuel Torres, has to contend with the script that only deigns to touch on his identity. Manny is a Mexican working with Hollywood and with the exception of the very gross scene at the beginning of the movie, I don’t think he has a conversation with a Mexican person at all. Not that he’s actively avoiding them for political reasons like workplace preservation or for selfish personal reasons, just that he never has one. In any era, people of color tend to stick with their own and especially in white dominated spaces, it is near unheard of to not at least try and find a compatriot, even if it’s just saying hi in the hallway. The movie also doesn’t want to comment on his race as he’s moving up in the world becoming an exec and only feels like using it when it wants Manny to curse Nellie out in Spanish, nearly 3/4 of the way through the film. All of these moments add up to a movie that feels like Damien Chazelle is only interested in race and sexuality as window dressing, not fit for any real in depth analysis.
Speaking of window dressing, the movie is incredibly mounted. Both the production and costume design are a dazzling array of textures and colors, adding richness to an old world without feeling old. Unfortunately for audiences, there’s only so much fine fabrics and gilded chandeliers can do. The film struggles to maintain any semblance of pace and there is distinct impression that the movie did not know how to end (the ending is so weird). Babylon ultimately decided to go for shock and awe and Damien can’t quite control the chaos.
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