Babylon a film that pays homage to Hollywood and at the same time gives it a kick (sure to become a cult film).
A few years ago I read two volumes of a book by Kenneth Anger called Hollywood Babylon, which tells very scandalous and lurid stories related to the Mecca of cinema between the 1920s and 1980s. Babylon represents sin, worldliness, the devil's influence on the earth and spiritual captivity.
Recently, a film by Damien Chazelle, a filmmaker who surprised Hollywood with what I consider his best film Whiplash, a story of love-hate and dedication between a teacher and his student in a musical conservatory in New York City, was released, then he made audiences fall in love with La La Land, a correct musical that tells us about the city of Los Angeles, through a love story in a somewhat hostile environment, and the more than correct Firts Man that tells the story of Neil Armstrong, and the preparation of the Apollo 11 mission.
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Babylon is a very well filmed and enjoyable film if the viewer is able to recognize the countless film references, if there is something to criticize it is its three hours and eight minutes of duration, what pushes back more than one viewer. We are in front of a work that in a great part shows the cinema within the cinema.
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The first thirty-five minutes are apotheosis as the viewer enters an orgiastic party like those celebrated in the 20's in Hollywood; there are elephants, lavishness, glamour, sex, depravity, and drugs, just as Kenneth Anger tells us.
Connect immediately with Anger's book by catching references to the Roscoe¨ Fatty¨ Arbukcle scandal.
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Brad Pitt's impersonation of Jack Conrad is physically similar to John Gilbert, one of the most successful silent film leading men, rivaling Rudolph Valentino.
Margot Robbie characterizes Nellie LaRoy the wild girl with movie star aspirations, as they would say at the time an It girl as were Clara Bow, Coleen Moore and even Gloria Swanson, however her wardrobe manages to take me out of the film at times, I think it is not in keeping with the Roaring Twenties.
The Jazz music is essential, emotional, deafening here actor Jovan Adepo portrays Sidney Palmer, a trumpet player in a Jazz band who will later be cannibalized by Hollywood. Sydney has a recurring but much more minor role in the film. He becomes successful in sound films by appearing in them playing with orchestras, decides to leave Hollywood when a lighting mistake in those days of black and white films makes his face look too white and he is forced to paint it black with shoe polish.
Diego Calva is Manny and as incredible as it may seem, he is a Latino in the Hollywood of the 20's and 30's who does whatever it takes to fit into the world of movies, if we go back in history there is a precedent in Rene Cardona and who worked as an actor, director, producer and screenwriter in the Hollywood of that time and later carved a successful career in Mexico. Manny, who works hard, is very smart and makes things work, is a charismatic, sympathetic character.
Li Jun Li, plays Lady Fay Zhu, a bisexual Chinese actress who reminds us of Anna May Wong, (who despite being very talented was underrated by the Hollywood of the time who only gave her roles of seductive and stereotypical women), and the famous Marlene Dietrich.
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We will see how a film was shot in those days of silent movies, with live music, (I imagine this was to mark the rhythm to the artists), outdoor sets, women film directors. The themes were very diverse: old west, comedies, dramas, action, middle age, and everything was made at the same time in the same outdoor locations.
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The central problem for these characters, or the blessing for some, is the arrival of sound films, which by 1930 was already a standard in movies where talent that did not adapt to the new audiovisual language was discarded.
In the film we are presented with a scene in which actress Nellie LaRoy, director Ruth Adler (Olivia Hamilton) and her production team try to adapt to the strict conditions necessary to record sound on a sound stage. The cameras being too noisy, they were enclosed in large booths to isolate them from the microphones which posed a number of problems in the production and made the cameras more static.
Jack Conrad is a womanizing, alcoholic, disorderly Hollywood star actor who tries to evolve to the talkies but can't find his place. He is an employee of MGM and has been married several times The evolution of the character is very believable. At the beginning, he was not taken seriously when he entered the talkies, but after several consecutive failures, the public stopped idolizing him and the producers decided not to invest in him anymore. He enters a movie theater to check the reaction of the crowd, but finds that people laugh at him in one of the emotional scenes, and at that moment he realizes that his time is over. He talks with his friend Lady Fay Zhu in a hotel of the time, until he says goodbye and goes to a sad end.
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Nellie LaRoy, is an actress who believed that a person is born a star, she didn't care what others thought of her. She rises to fame in the industry, but the public begins to form judgments and criticisms about her. She carries two burdens on her back; an ailing mother, committed to what seems like a mental institution, and a father who creates obstacles for her during her career by making him her manager. She succumbs to the excesses of Hollywood; compulsive gambler, drugs, alcohol, sex, The studio she works for tries to fix Nelly's diction, to make it suitable for talking pictures and also tries to clean up her reputation but this doesn't work so Nelly, despite having made them a lot of money, is abandoned by the movie studios. She dies very young at the age of 34.
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Manuel "Manny" Torres at the beginning of the film works as a secondary assistant to a film executive, and gradually rises within the industry. All the stories of the other protagonists flow and slightly converge in him. He is a man in love with Nellie LaRoy throughout the film, and is her only true friend who tries to protect and help her.
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In the final part of the film Tobey Maguire gives life to James McKay, a mobster connected to the big stars of Hollywood in a criminal network that includes illegal gambling and parties with drugs of all kinds. He is a sinister character that Manny meets because of Nelly when he helps her pay off a debt. McKay lives in an underworld, full of drugs, torture, illegal fights and Dantesque shows with a lot of debauchery.
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Nelly and Manny must flee from McKay and his thugs because unbeknownst to them the debt money Nelly paid McKay was counterfeit. In the course of this escape they profess their love for each other, but Nelly decides to stay in Hollywood, saying goodbye to Manny by disappearing from his life so as not to drag him towards self-destruction.
Manny flees to New York to settle down, builds a family and manages to have a business selling appliances. Years later, in the 50's he goes on a trip to Hollywood with his family, and while they are resting he goes to a movie theater and sees the classic film Singin' in the Rain.
When he sees this film he is moved and recognizes that he was part of something great, and as we are shown films and references that have influenced hundreds of filmmakers around the world. With a smile from ear to ear and with tears in his eyes, he seems to feel grateful for the experiences he lived thanks to cinema.
Being even more of a film buff, Stanley Donen's and Gene Kelly 1952 film Singin' in the Rain is a notable influence on the film. In this work a scene is parodied in which John Gilbert in a movie kisses the protagonist while repeating over and over again "I love you". The film was released and Gilbert's image as a leading man fell to the laughter of the audience. The same thing happens to Jack Conrad in the film.
In Singing in the Rain we observe the retakes that have to be done due to the new sound system in the studios, and in Babylon we see in the same way repetitions of a scene that manages to get on our nerves because of how exasperating it is, there is even a death due to the conditions in which it is being filmed.
The film is suffocating, with a very fast editing, and many things happen if we pay attention in addition to the main stories we can realize many immoral acts, especially at the beginning of the film.
I don't doubt that in those crazy 20's these orgies were the order of the day in Hollywood, what I don't think is that they were as well choreographed as in the film.
There are references to Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst, Erich von Stroheim, and Irving Thalberg, (Max Minghella in a very wasted role), the tabloid columnist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), created from references like the writer Elinor Glyn, Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper (who could make or break an artist's career) and the fictional character of Addison DeWitt from All about Eva.
Damien Chazelle's love for Hollywood is evident, yet his vision depicts the darkness, destruction and underbelly of Hollywood rather than nostalgia for that era. It is a murky vision of Hollywood coupled with a succession of excesses with an unstoppable pace and excessive ideas.
The scene where we observe a sequence of films from the beginning of cinema to the present day (interspersed with scenes from the same film), and which covers approximately three minutes of the film, reminds me powerfully of two scenes from Stanley Kubrick's films A Clockwork Orange and 2001 A Space Odyssey, and of course the scene of the censored kissing images in Cinema Paradiso by Giuseppe Tornatore. In the first two films, the montage of images represents a way of expression and a channel for the liberation of emotions, as well as psychedelic visions and in the case of Tornatore's film the scenes of kisses cut in films because they were censored at some point. This montage works as a shock therapy, in which the author wants to show us the beginning, rise and fall of cinematography through time starting with the first photographic procedures, scenes of films that have made history through time, the death of old audiovisual technologies and the birth of others that still surprise the audience attending a movie theater.
There are in this scene more cinematographic references: the cat and the horse in movement, The Arrival of a train to the station of the Lumière brothers, Journey to the moon of Georges Méliès, Assault and robbery of a train, which in 1903 dared to place a gunman shooting at the public, first films of D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, the first films of D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, the first films of D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, the first films of D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, The Jazz Singer, The Wizard of Oz from 1939, a dizzying subjective shot on a roller coaster to sell the goodness of the Cinerama format, the knife from An Andalusian Dog, and the one from Psycho two versions of the Joan of Arc story, one of the first experiments with CGI, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, TRON, Matrix, Terminator, Avatar and the boy from Ingmar's Persona . There are many other references that I really don't know about.
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Perhaps by showing how wild, excessive, and even ugly Hollywood can be, the film does not have the support of critics and audiences, even though it shows a lot of inclusion by presenting characters that today would be cataloged LGBTI+, black people and people of other nationalities different from the American cinema of the 20s and 30s, women film directors.
It is a film that moviegoers will be fascinated by since, like me, they will find endless references, others will like it but will admit that the film is too long for what it tells, and others will dislike it since it presents many sub-plots that could have been eliminated in favor of the film's fluidity.
The film has turned out to be a flop for its director, costing over $80 million, and grossing only $15 million as of January 2023.
Many criticize the frenzy of an orgiastic first part and when it begins to change its tone and the maturation of its characters these people manage to connect with the film, there are also the spectators who liked the first part of the film and resent the energy drop of the second part, and there is another part of the audience, mostly moviegoers, who like the film because we can empathize with the idea that the director shows us by being aware of all the film references that are showing us, despite its long duration.
The costumes, music and production design are very good in the film, being these the only nominations the film got for the 2023 Oscars, being these categories in charge of Mary Zophres, Justin Hurwitz, and Florencia Martin and Anthony Carlino.
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The film's producers are Tobey Maguire, Olivia Hamilton, Marc Platt, and Matthew Plouffe.
I see a marketing mistake in competing this one with Avatar 2: The Sense of Water since viewers will prefer to see between December and January to see a more familiar film and not one with such an adult tone as Babylon.
This film is not very well regarded by many sectors of today's Hollywood who do not like to be told certain truths to their face, and do not assume that some situations reflected in it are still very relevant.
Thank you very much for allowing me to share with you my vision of this film, which I recommend you give a chance and I hope that by reading my publication you will have a tool that will allow you to appreciate the film more clearly. Best regards.