Babylon is the new film by Damien Chazelle and takes place in late 1920s and early 1930s Hollywood which underwent a big transition from the silent film era to the sound or “talkie” era as they called it then, caught up in these changes are Manny Torres (Diego Calva) who is keen to get work in the movies, Jack Crawford (Brad Pitt) a silent movie star who wants to transition to sound and Nelly LaRoy (Margot Robbie) a young girl who dreams of stardom.
Babylon is sadly a mixed bag for me and it’s a bit of a bummer to say given that I’ve been a bit of a fan of Damien Chazelle’s work as I admired his direction on La La Land in 2016 and I really enjoyed his previous film First Man in 2018 even if Universal mishandled its release back then but before I delve into why I feel mixed I want to mention its big positives:
- Firstly the film is very nicely photographed by Linus Sandgren who also photographed First Man and the James Bond film No Time to Die and this movie looks great, the big crowd recreation scenes look fantastic especially on a big cinema screen, the party scenes feel lavish and theatrical, the sound stage scenes look good and the Los Angeles desert looks hot and dusty.
- Secondly there is a great score here by Justin Hurwitz with its many party scenes having this jazzy bombastic soundtrack that I was tapping my toes too, there’s a nice slower theme for Manny and Nelly and there are some other big brassy tunes like Voodoo Mama and Coke Room and the Finale, this is one musical score you are going to want to listen to when the film is over.
But alas despite those strong technical qualities this film did indeed leave me mixed and its for one big reason:
- The films storytelling on the whole and there is a lot of it in its 189 minute running time just left me cold and I feel this way because while watching this movie I kept saying to myself “Here’s to the Fools who Dream” which was the logline for La La Land and Chazelle I feel touched on very similar ideas in this movie in that movie in terms of wanting to make it big, having a dream and the demands and sacrifices that have to be made to achieve that goal.
But that film handles those a lot better because it never loses sight of who its core focus is, its Mia and Sebastian and their connection together whereas here the focus is split between Jack’s story and Manny’s story and Nelly’s story and because of it it felt like a whirlwind mess without any core story focus or any emotional core to hook this towards and after a while I felt nothing and just wanted it to end.
And so that was Babylon and it was a movie I was keen to see but after a while left me cold and feeling nothing despite its great technical achievements, the best movie about movie making for me still remains Robert Altman’s The Player and I don’t think anything’s going to top it for me, 2 and a half out of 5.
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