[star rating=”4.5″] BABYLON. Director: Damien Chazelle. Writer: Damien Chazelle. With Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Jean Smart and more.
MEGAN CHORITZ reviews
If I were forced to select a single word to describe this 3.09-hour long magnum opus of a film, I would call it massive. It is massive on every level, story, performances, costumes, set, props, dialogue, ideas, music, sound, themes, and time. It is a massive commitment making such a long movie, and it is a commitment watching it too. Today’s audiences, comfortable with byte size bits of information and TikTok length entertainment are going to have to shift and commit, but it is so worth it. It is an astounding, terrifying, hilarious and totally original film, and I loved it.
The preview I attended was full. This added to the sheer scale of the movie; this film is definitely made for the big screen. Director Damien Chazelle explains his maximalist approach in this short interview on IMDB, which you can access here.
Birth of Hollywood
The movie tackles the birth of Hollywood and spans the decades from the early silent movies through to booming talkies, from a dusty multiple-set-pit in California to the huge film studios of the fifties. It follows the rise and almost immediate decline of Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), who is unable to transition into talkies, as well as the fall of top billing actor and influencer Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt). Perpendicular to this is the rise and fall of the unlikely Mexican do-it-all, to studio executive, Manny Torres (Diego Calva), who risks everything because of his unrequited love for Nellie. Threaded through this are the mad directors, musicians, pathetic producers, hangers on, and demented side products of the industry – the perverted power partiers. It is massive.
Soon after the movie starts, we are thrown into an outrageous, orgiastic, debauched, drug fuelled, manic, grotesque party. The music is beyond loud, there is abundant nudity, mad sex, an elephant, an OD, masters and servants, a mountain of cocaine, and everybody trying to get everybody else’s attention. It’s quite the place to start and it sets up the rest of the film. Things go from batshit crazy to quite demented, but it does take a few hours.
Fortunately, the cast are beyond brilliant. Brad Pitt is astoundingly good. He delivers a confident, masterful, nuanced, energetic and ultimately moving performance that doesn’t falter once. He knows exactly what he is doing, and it is mesmerising. The same goes for Margot Robbie. Energetic, magnetic, over the top, ballsy and completely devastating. She is a force. In total contrast, Diego Calva is the perfect foil, the shocked, stable, constant witness to the insanity. He is perfect. The monologue of the movie is delivered by the awesome Jean Smart. Her ridiculous high-brow film columnist is charged with speaking the cynical, horrible truth of Hollywood, and it is so utterly jaw dropping. Everyone is perfectly cast and rises to the occasion.
Completely mesmerising
What is also incredible about this film is how hilarious it is. Battle scenes in the beginning had me laughing out loud, and a midnight mayhem scene in the desert (can’t say more because of spoilers) had me shrieking. It is sometimes shockingly funny, sometimes grotesquely funny, sometimes just pure comedy, and sometimes filled with aching pathos.
I really enjoyed director Damien Chazelle’s point of view. This version of Hollywood and the rise of the studios is without the rose-tinted glasses and upright glamour of other films of the period. This film describes a ruthlessness and debauchery, a lawless wild west, that is beyond the confines of good cinema. All sorts of lunatics were making and starring in films, and they all had some really weird stuff going on. It makes much more sense than the puritanical perceptions we have of the time.
Babylon is exactly that. Babylon. You can’t predict what will happen there. It’s the devil’s playground. It’s Pandora’s box split wide open with everything spilled out. It is watching a train wreck in slow motion. And it is completely mesmerising.
What: Babylon
Opens: 20 January 2023 at the Labia, Ster-Kinekor and Nu Metro cinemas.
WS
