Review of Babylon (2022) by Jamess — 22 Mar 2023
Let's start by saying Damien Chazelle loves movies. It's apparent in the care and craft in recreating 1920's Hollywood and the fact that he created a three hour long rambling, yet entertaining epic all about the dreamers and schemers of the early days of Hollywood.
Diego Calva is our wide-eyed surrogate, who within minutes is covered in elephant dung while delivering the animal to a wild Hollywood orgy/party. Margot Robbie is the wild child willing to do what she can for stardom, and Brad Pitt is the matinee idol leading man.
Chazelle is definitely influenced by Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon, a mid-sixties book about scandals of early Hollywood, as the opening party displays. Two sequences stand out, and they both rely on Robbie going all out.
Not surprising they are both about the pain and pleasure of movie making. The saloon scene and the scene involving their first sound recording are brilliant scenes, because you get a sense of Chazelle loving the actual work it takes to make a movie.
It's Bogdonavich's Nickelodeon mixed with Boogie Nights with a heaping of Singin In The Rain. The fact that the film ends with a montage of clips from Raiders, Tron, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, which I'm sure Chazelle adored growing up watching (the magic of) movies.
He even has a split second shot of a "BABYLON " clapboard to make it more personal. So the movies can ruin the lives of those who make them, but the magic of the movies themselves lives on. Ok Damien, I guess.
This review of Babylon (2022) was written by Jamess on 22 Mar 2023.
Babylon has generally received positive reviews.
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