Babylon (2022) — Read Along
End times fun. Without the fun.
“The new Babylon film isn’t so much singing in the rain as a golden shower of utter disappointment”
Stephen Blackford, 1st February 2023
The opening 9 minutes as laid out before you presently will hopefully give you a flavour for the debauchery, hedonism and a Hollywood of the golden age on the cusp of flowering and morphing into innumerable historic futures pictured here through the lens of Damien Chazelle (Whiplash, First Man, La La Land) in his fifth all time cinematic release.
Then for the next 180 minutes you’re on your own!
Bel Air 1926, and in the midst of the “Roaring Twenties” we immediately find our of Coen Brothers inspired hero in the middle of the madness all around him, “Manuel Torres” (Diego Calva). Soon to be Americanized and affectionately known more simply as “Manny” by everyone in the Hollywood community, first he must push an elephant sized stone up a hill to the mansion that sits atop it. Sisyphus may not have succeeded, but as the elephant’s trunk distracts a helpful driver as he deposits pile after streaming pile of watery excrement over a fellow helpful soul, Manny sure does.
His elephant sized stone rolled up to the mansion on the hill, Manny’s reward was the sight and sounds of a hedonistic, drink and drug fuelled orgy of sexual and societal excess, and a Hollywood party like no other. Chazelle’s direction and camerawork here are incredible: dizzying, swirling, swooping shots immerse us in Manny’s immediate world of naked wanton sex, a hive of highly sexual life, of free spirited abandon, an urolagnia sex game with deadly consequences in one room, a Kubrickian eyes wide shut response in another and everywhere is excess to absolute Hollywood excess. Backed by the beginnings of an incredible musical score from Justin Hurwitz and here the thumping 1920’s sounds of a bombastic jazz band, it’s an exhausting experience, especially so for our would be cinematic hero and escaping from the Hollywood walls of Hades for a relaxing cigarette, “Nellie LaRoy” (Margot Robbie) crash lands into his life for the first time.
“Do you know where I can find some drugs?” Nellie asks her new beau and for Manny, a Mexican immigrant, was on the precipice of living the American dream.
And now you’re very definitely on your own!
The film itself may end in the early 1950’s but it primarily paints the final years of those “roaring” 1920’s through the early 1930’s and a totemic shift in cinema from silent movies to “Talking Pictures” or simply “Talkies”. Backed by an ensemble cast of Brad Pitt, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li and Tobey Maguire, together with director Spike Jonze and musicians Flea and Albert Hammond Jr amongst many others, this is Manny’s story to tell and Diego Calva is truly magnificent as the Coen Brothers man in the middle of a maddening crisis not of his making. In a somewhat supporting role, Margot Robbie follows up her outstanding performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Hollywood for Damien Chazelle’s here with a tour de force of devil may care panache that was eerily similar (in a complimentary manner) to Ana de Armas’ recent portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in last year’s “Blonde”. There’s a character construction to the façade of Nellie LaRoy just as there was for Norma Jean Baker and Marilyn Monroe. So too the heartbreak hidden here by Margot Robbie’s portrayal of a drunken dreamer way, way ahead of her time and exploited just the same as the “blonde bombshell” still thirty cinematic years away.
There’s a beautiful reverence for film and for cinema here, it seeps through every scene, poignantly typified by the red, blue, green coloured final frames of a film I just had so little interest for. Brad Pitt was overshadowed by Calva and Robbie but his drunken balcony fall and resignation to life as a now old and retired actor bookend his usual brilliance, Tobey Maguire’s antics in Act 3 were a bizarre joy to behold and Jean Smart excellent in her portrayal of an ageing Hollywood writer and gossip columnist. Two underdeveloped portrayals came and went and with them went the film, with Jovan Adepo’s heart breaking realisation that Hollywood desired his sound but not his skin tone and Li Jun Li’s incredible introduction real high watermarks for a film that otherwise left their characters largely absent.
Whilst the Oscar winning musical score of Justin Hurwitz sees him nominated again this year, there wasn’t the heart of First Man or particularly La La Land and after the 30 minute introduction (30 minutes!) to the blood red opening titles of “Babylon” and the wonderful almost back-to-back scenes later of the boiling frenzy of eight foul mouthed takes for a simple scene at a would be college dormitory or the brilliant taxi ride after between our two young lovers, I just didn’t care anymore.
And there was still two hours left to run.
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Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Pre-sound Hollywood was definitely that hedonistic. The tragic story of Fatty Arbuckle and the woman he allegedly raped, Virginia Rappe, proves that without a doubt.