Review: Babylon (2022)

Babylon

Rating

Director

Damien Chazelle

Screenplay

Damien Chazelle

Length

3h 09m

Starring

Diego Calva, Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, P.J. Byrne, Lukas Haas, Max Minghella, Rory Scovel, Katherine Waterston, Tobey Maguire, Flea, Jeff Garlin, Eric Roberts, Ethan Suplee, Samara Weaving, Olivia Wilde, Spike Jonze

MPAA Rating

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Review

There are many stories about Hollywood that can be told and a lot of them have been documented or sensationalized throughout film history, but few films have attempted to not only expose the debauchery of Silent Era Hollywood but also celebrating its output. Babylon tries to do just that looking at the glitz, glamor, and gossip of the 1920s.

Set against the backdrop of the transition from silent pictures to sound, director Damien Chazelle is equally engrossed by the outlandish nature of the period as the magic of the movies made in that period. Rather than telling a known saga of the period, he instead weaves together the lives of three fictional characters that embody some of the traits and characteristics of legendary figures of that time, including two that are thinly veiled treatments of prominent actors.

Margot Robbie plays a young woman trying to make it in Hollywood in 1926, a year prior to the advent of sound pictures. She makes a huge splash by sneaking in to a Hollywood party held at a remote mansion where a young immigrant (Diego Calva) instantly falls for her and enables her to make her grand entrance. Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy catapults into stardom thanks to her flexibility as an actor; Calva’s Manny Torres goes from elephant wrangler and production assistant to producer of sights and spectacles; and Brad Pitt’s Jack Conrad rides a successful career through multiple marriages while his career faces setbacks as the great roles of his silent performances become passé and his less artful post-silent work becomes a millstone around his career. Perhaps an actual biopic of Clara Bow and John Gilbert (the two figures LaRoy and Conrad are largely baesd on) would have been more fascinating, especially that of Gilbert who once romanced Greta Garbo.

It’s interesting to watch the three characters and their rising and falling arcs, all of which relate in some way to the tidal shift flooding over the industry as sound completely rewrites their script. The film does a great job showing how efficiency within Hollywood silent pictures is turned into chaos and stricture in the grips of the limitations sound recording places on filmmaking. Babylon most comes alive in two sequences, one set on a desert motion picture lot where several films are being made simultaneously and another that takes place on a sound stage in Hollywood. While there are other notable scenes, including the debauched opening party, these are the two that will best resonate with cineastes.

Outside of these production moments, the film feels like it’s toiling away at revealing plot threads that aren’t nearly as engaging as they could be. Chazelle’s script has the best of intentions and for a production as lavish and sensational as this one, it’s a bit surprising that the narrative cohesion feels perfunctory, dragging the audience through three interwoven storylines. Robbie, Calva, and Pitt do tremendous work selling their larger than life personas to the viewer, but their arcs are treated more like star-crossed events than organic ones.

There’s a lot of visual splendor in Babylon and its an evocatively wrought melodrama, but it never quite feels real. Perhaps that’s Chazelle’s intention, but in failing to root the picture in a believable foundation, the audience is left to believe that much of what happens on screen is outlandish fantasy. Considering how close to true some of the storylines depicted are, that’s a huge disservice.