Rating of
3/4
Cinema!
Matthew Brady - wrote on 02/15/23
Ruth Adler: “You cry on cue for every take, how do you do it?”
Nellie LaRoy: “I just think of home.”
An interesting contrast between LaLa Land and this movie in terms of its portrayal of Hollywood; LaLa Land takes a magical and whimsical approach, while Babylon is more honest and chaotic.
I have seen film critics call this “a love letter to cinema”, but I don’t know what movie they watched because there was no love here. This letter that critics bring up is the letter that exposes how cruel, gross, and disturbing Hollywood can be. We see elephant diarrhea shitting all over the camera, someone getting a golden shower, a rat getting eaten alive, deaths on film sets that get brushed aside, suicides, careers failing, a toxic work environment, and an Eye Wide Shut-like party in a dungeon.
But yeah, a love letter.
Babylon is my most minor film from Damien Chazelle. This movie had no reason to be three hours long, as it could have been two-and-a-half hours long because it felt a bit exhausting towards the end, and I was waiting for it to end. Also, the ending montage of famous movie clips, going as far as to show Avatar was certainly…a choice, which I don’t think worked, as it was very jarring in context with the rest of the 1920s storyline. '
However, there are a lot of great things here. The production and costume design perfectly bring the period alive, and the cinematography is dynamic, with a couple of shots that stuck with me after the credits rolled.
The performances from Diego Calva, Margot Robbie, and Jovan Adepo were all stellar and superstars. It is a star-studded cast whom all manger to shine in their respective roles. Even Tobey Maguires' slim screen time has a creepy weirdo, which made for a memorable scene, and I can tell Damien Chazelle was inspired by Boogie Nights.
One scene that was my favourite was a tender exchange between Brad Pitt and Jean Smart about how artists live on through time long after they are dead through their work in cinema. It’s the monologue delivered wonderfully by Jean Smart which gave me a new and unique perspective on how through art, we inject ourselves into the work, so little pieces of us, words, fingerprints, and tears, can be mortal. I can think about the time watching the greats like James Dean, relating to his struggles and rebellious rage, or Takashi Shimura facing his grim fate in Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru. Or a painter like Vincent van Gogh or a poet like Rudyard Kipling. All work I admire on a grand scale, all from people who lived and died before I came into this world, yet it still feels relevant and never out of date.
Out of all the chaos, this stood out to me the most. Cinema!
