Babylon Review
Babylon is disappointing all the more so for the glimpses of brilliance. Amongst this debaucherous, gratuitous, diabolical tale of early Hollywood in an age of change, there are true diamonds to be found - but also plenty of coal.
Manny Torres (Diego Calva) dreams of working in the movies. But 1920’s Hollywood is a tough place. He starts out as a fixer, working a debaucherous Hollywood party. At the party, he meets Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a manic dreamer who wants to be a star (or as she says, already is). Nellie is ‘discovered’ at the party, and finds herself on movie sets the next day, her acting career taking off. Meanwhile, at the party Manny helps out Hollywood star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), and finds himself also working on films the next day. Babylon continues to track the careers of this trio - Nellie, as she reaches the heights of fame and spirals out of control; Jack, as his star fades in the advent of sound coming to the pictures, and Manny as he rises through the ranks to direct his own films, before calamity strikes them all.
Damian Chazelle brings Babylon, his most ambitious work to date, to the screen amidst a storm of controversy. Early articles lambasted its extended runtime (3 hours and 9 minutes), its depiction of excess, and its tonal gratuity.
As a Chazelle lover, and huge fan of his previous works (La La Land, Whiplash, First Man), I wanted to love this movie so badly. And to be fair, there is a lot to love.
Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva are all absolutely fantastic in their respective roles. Pitt is lackadaisically enjoyable, chewing the scenery with every line. Robbie is a whirlwind, dancing and joking, laughing and crying, ultimately perfectly capturing the endless pressure, stress and decline her industry so purveys. Calva is a complete breakout; the heart and soul of the film, and utterly spectacular.
There’s also some nice side moments. In particular, while his scenes are completely unnecessary, it’s always a joy to watch Tobey Maguire swing for the fences like this, and P.J. Byrne has one of the all time great scenes losing it with the first attempt at recording sound for one of Nellie’s pictures.
The music also is fantastic. Justin Hurwitz, frequent collaborator of Chazelle, delivers some truly inspired work in Babylon, and a lot of it could be a feature on your Spotify Wrapped this year. It all culminates in a gorgeous finale that wraps the threads together in an excess celebration of cinema, its power, and history. It’s enough to make you cry.
Why then doesn’t it?
There’s always something that feels slightly off about Babylon. A little self-obsessed perhaps. A little bit too much of a pat on the back to Hollywood. Or perhaps it's the endless excess. It’s an affecting tale, sure, and Calva’s Manny is a fantastic audience into a world of huge personalities and unreachable events. But it never feels quite as put together as it should; never quite as tight as it should. At 3 hours and 9 minutes, it is excessively long without point, and that overlong feeling kicks in about an hour and a half into the picture. While Avatar: Way of Water was a less challenging, less (from a plot perspective) creatively ambitious film, it also didn’t have me checking my watch for half the runtime. It felt like 2 hours - Babylon feels like 5.
While that doesn’t negate the great work done, and the genuine enjoyment of the first half, it’s undeniable that the finale would have hit so much stronger had it not been longed for. This is an epic, both in scale and length, but it only needed to be epic in scale. Instead, it crams in a series of unnecessary plot points and threads that leave you longing for another pass on the script, another week in the edit room.
Babylon certainly captures the excess and debauchery of Hollywood in the 20’s. But in the self-congratulatory process, it loses some of the joy.
