Babylon (2022)

 

Director: Damien Chazelle

Screenplay: Damien Chazelle

Cast: Brad Pitt as Jack Conrad; Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy; Diego Calva as Manny Torres; Jean Smart as Elinor St. John; Jovan Adepo as Sidney Palmer; Li Jun Li as Lady Fay Zhu; P. J. Byrne as Max; Lukas Haas as George Munn; Olivia Hamilton as Ruth Adler; Max Minghella as Irving Thalberg; Rory Scovel as The Count; Katherine Waterston as Estelle; Tobey Maguire as James McKay; Flea as Bob Levine; Jeff Garlin as Don Wallach; Eric Roberts as Robert Roy

Ephemeral Waves

 

Looking at Babylon, whilst I am going to be incredibly positive about the film, I still think of what film critic and writer Manny Faber meant by “white elephant” art in cinema, films ripe in ambition and scope in resources which, when he coined the term, was a negative in how bloated and pretentious they were next to “termite art”, which were usually the lower budget genre projects which could be braver, subversive and more free in being able to communicate their themes. In the modern day I think Faber’s ideas, whilst still salient, need to be re-contextualised as, whilst films like Babylon are timed for the award seasons, which are about big and heavy weighted dramas about big themes, things have changed. The award season does potentially present to us high minded films of large budgets Faber, and even regular audience members, could view of saccharine and pretentious, but most of the cinematic season in the United States in their industry, as films appear outside the summer season, are becoming the superhero and licensed media blockbusters, which carry the largest budgets and promotion. Babylon is now are a less frequently made breed of films. The white elephant and termite art discussions also did not think ahead to a film like Babylon either, as most films in this subject, about the history of Hollywood, did not open with a close up of an elephant's anus defecating on the camera, mountains of cocaine, nude bodies everywhere and a dwarf actor on a pogo stick shaped like a penis which emits fake semen before the opening credits. Now with a film like this in the Hollywood Oscar seasons, the question need to fit specific titles of how their themes and how they tell them, and whether they are successful or not, as whilst a rare moment, we have a lavish Hollywood production of a significant cost which is subversive and as unpredictable as even an exploitation movie from the old days in context and pacing.

Most films of this type, the grandeur of Hollywood and its downfalls, have toyed with this type of salacious content, but director-writer Damien Chazelle comes to the subject with a surprising level of excess and tonal jumps in its three plus hours. All of I have mentioned is just the tip of this decadent iceberg, surrounding a party opening the film which introduces Diego Calva’s Manny Torres, a Mexican immigrant whose job working at the part is for him a potential stepping stone into Hollywood. Starting in 1926, Torres with stars in his eyes and love for cinema at the time is the closest to a protagonist in an ensemble piece, a wildly toned and chaotic film which will go through into the talkies era when sound was introduced into cinema, both a time to consider whether cinema could be art and one which for its director-writer lets him explore the lives of figures who went through it, between those losing their popularity to the increasing push for moral policing.

Babylon's main thesis is frankly a mess at times, to be truthful, if portrayed with a lot to admire. It is an ode to classic Hollywood which however realises it stands on the grounds of the profane and unnecessary sacrifice, something which it has to dance around and honestly is struggling to try to come to grips with. In this case not, that is not even a negative but the inevitability of the subject. It can pay tribute with the legends of cinema, but even before the talkies brought unnecessary restrictions and racism, the first half has the drugs, the excess and that the way Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) gets her way into the door as an actress is another having an overdose at the opening party. There is a reflection, even if the film cannot put a proper mark on its theme, is it at least admits its art from this era, the masterpieces and unsung gems, are still built within horrifying scandals and hidden secrets. As with the director’s breakthrough film Whiplash (2014), where Damien Chazelle was channelling his own struggles with learning to become a jazz musician, through a film showing the ultimate sacrifices a stand in takes to perfect his jazz drumming art form, he here is channelling the struggles with creating the art of cinema in this period of scandal and the profane.

One of the film's obvious issues, which cannot be hidden and does explain its chaotic tone, is that this could have easily had an extra hour to sort itself out. Brad Pitt is front and centre in advertising, but this is a film about multiple people, looking at a huge turn in Hollywood's history from the silent era into the talking pictures era. Even if one glaring absence is mentioning Will Hays and the Hays Code, which forced more adult content to be more subtly referenced, this is still a period of Hollywood having to bring in self censorship to avoid the government breathing down its neck, including the cost this change in cinema, from this to bigotry, causes to a set of characters. The film's ode to cinema is sincere, not necessary suggesting that someone has to die on a film set due to accidental impaling in a mock medieval battle, but that the chaos of silent cinema as depicted here, almost always about to fall off the rails and a mess of shooting, broken cameras and pure chance is however passionate. The clear sick sense of humour throughout the film which Damien Chazelle deliberately helps greatly with this. The film when vulgar and funny fully succeeds, not turning a blind eye on all that was wrong at all, contrasting this with even the act of filmmaking being painful but ultimately successful; the hell of early talkie film production shown when Nellie LaRoy has to repeat herself over and over per take because someone sneezed is one of this film’s many scenes, even if a failure for some audiences, that will linger as a successful one among many. Even the most potentially pretentious aspect of the film - a flash-forward hallucination for one character, a huge montage into the history of cinema where Ingmar Bergman, Ed Emshwiller’s Sunstone (1979) and blue cat aliens make a cameo - is sincere, admirable pretention that says, for all the agony and huge piles of cocaine used onscreen, the joy of cinema is the desired outcome. These films can be salvaged from all the tragedy and unnecessary decadence, and stand as gems whether entertainment or with more thoughts in mind.

The ensemble nature of the film adds an interesting pace, where everyone is connected to the casualties of this momentous change. With Manny Torres central, linking everyone else, he himself is a casualty too in being the Hispanic fan of cinema who, in his passion, falls into compromise and sells his soul, even playing to a cultural stereotype by masquerading as being from Spain instead of Mexico, his climb up the ladder in the industry greasing the wheels of compromise in other areas. The desire to look at how non-white actors and non-acting staff in the industry is one of the film's most honourable aspects, but again that sense this needed an extra hour to complete this task is felt even if a lot of great material is still here. Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), a black trumpeter who becomes the lead for a series of "race" film, as an accepted black face to white Americans, is a film premise in itself, a whole mind field of concern into the modern day of how specifically a male black actor can find themselves in this position of being marketable to white viewers but with all the patronisation, and potential stereotyping, we still scrutinise in the modern day. Even the straw which breaks the camel’s back involves burnt cork, all because of the issues surrounding how the South, racially segregated, had completely aberrant rules in regards to race even on the silver screen. Whilst a story with a proper closure, and a happy ending, Palmer is however one of the figures here missing a few beats, even if it deals with the persecution and the patronisation, that could have added more to Babylon’s virtues in depicting this character.

More disappointing in her lack of onscreen role is Li Jun Li’s Lady Fay Zhu, fascinating as a character from a working class Chinese family in the United States, going through Hollywood as a silent minority, and as much because she explicably evokes Anna Marie Wong, the real Chinese American actress she is clearly a stand-in for. It is fascinating to see a character like this in context, not least because Li Jun Li is good, but also because the character is another who had an entire film to flesh out from her story; Wong would struggle against bias, even in terms of being depicted onscreen, as an Asian woman but also had a career in cinema which moved outside of the United States, such as Piccadilly (1929) in the United Kingdom, which would have been fascinating to see more of here in Fay Zhu. The character also gets the best entrance of everyone in the film even if explicitly evoking Marlene Dietrich’s persona, of wearing men’s suits for cabaret numbers, apt as Wong and Dietrich would work together on Shanghai Express (1932) for Joseph von Sternberg. Again, there is so much here that I wish this was a longer film.

The two white characters in this ensemble do however offer as much in terms of casualties. Brad Pitt’s Jack Conrad may seem an outlier, a white man whose success comes with his drinking, luxury and terrible habit of marrying women quickly after meeting them, but he is still a tragic figure worth having sympathetic for even if his self destructive and id-like streaks, like getting shattered on booze before his take, are played for comedy. Pitt’s performance does so much to help, having developed least from the 2000s a combination of old school star charisma but a gleeful nature of playing goofy or charmingly naive figures, but as much of this is also because of this archetype. Hollywood tragically has so many real cases of male actors who were once incredibly popular and then were not even decades from this era, for them as much as for actresses, leaving those behind in its wake to try to find their purpose again, star in lower budget films, or leading to tragic conclusions. The immortality he is said to have, in one of the sombre scenes where the inevitable death is talked of, is the one hopeful spot, but there is still even cynicism in knowing that if anyone is going to remember Jack Conrad and preserve his films, it is as in real life the film fans themselves rather than the studios. Between studio fires losing prints from poorly handling their protection, silent films being junked, or Hollywood’s lack of interest in showing old films on streaming sites, immortality for these figures came from the Manny Fabers of the world and the regular film goers who caught the bug, from the specialist magazines, to preserve even the work of Poverty Row film stars. Even Damien Chazelle himself making this film in the first place, showing his own cinema obsession, is as much to encourage interest in this cinema that could still be forgotten.

Likewise, Margot Robbie is as good in her role, hers the tragic figure of someone with her own personal issues entering cinema, proudly her own person but unfortunately too much her own person when the screen wants a cleaned up image. Fighting against both the morality police and bias to her as a New Jersey woman, Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy is someone who, barring her flaw of gambling and substance abuse, is only committing a crime of being both brash and proudly vulgar to speak her own mind. As a woman meant to represent others’ desires of her onscreen, even when needing to be a respectable maiden instead, the character does stand out as one of the most important, even if any hers includes touches which would have added even more detail; such as her connection to Fay Zhu, as the censoring of their romantic relationship for “morality” is another enticing subplot we barely get.

Babylon is with a lot of ambition, content and scenes in performance to perfectly timed moments of humour which succeed, but also a lot which left me wanting more. This is not a bad thing at all, but it shows even in somehow managing to get the budget it got for some of these profane scenes, even to have a golden shower onscreen from a Paramount Pictures production this resplendently depicted, it was still clasping for a larger scale that, sadly, is not practical in terms of film as commerce; even this three hour plus length, outside of awards, is considered taboo as, unless a superhero film, most cinemas would want shorter films to be able to screen them more than once, as well as in multiple screens, to earn profit first. I cannot hate a film, even beyond its sincere attempt to tackling this story in terms of what cinema is, just for the seemingly ridiculous notion they cast Eric Roberts, as Nellie LaRoy’s father, in a small cameo and having an extended scene entirely based around him fighting a snake. Considering Roberts’ own meta textual context in being cast, the old brother of Julia Roberts who had some prominent large budget roles but has been a journeyman in cinema in all budgets, that just adds to his entertaining role and what proved to be the best sequence of the entire film. A farce set around this scenario in the desert, it could as with the whole film being considered blasphemous to Hollywood, showing its old side ridiculous and full of drunk mishaps, but alongside letting these characters be human, the scene is also hilarious for all the right reasons, even in showing Eric Roberts’ talents, as with the small role of Flea, bassist of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, in an almost unrecognisable but memorable role as one of the silent figures in Hollywood’s staff who get stuff done without wanting much credit back.

Some of the tonal choices do feel as if Damien Chazelle’s ambition were struggling with the prestige of the premise, as if he could have even taken further risks than he already did, as my thoughts turn to when Manny Torres ends up being Dante Alighieri in the arsehole of California, entering the Ninth Circles of Hell with the worst Virgil you could get, a coked out lounge lizard Tobey Maguire who will have him sleep with the fishes if he is not careful. It is a strange scene even in context I have to admire, even if it does have the questionable choice of casting actors with physical disabilities as denizens, even if chained up against their will, to depict the hellish nature of the location. The sequence with just details like the crocodile (a real one, rather than the CGI elephant earlier), and how it feels like the film is attempting, even struggling, to enter the tonal shifts one would presume from Takashi Miike, not a Hollywood Oscar contender, does bring up how Damien Chazelle took on risks and challenges for himself which do feel erratic, even in a good way, put together. Just the fact he had carte blanche with Babylon and that it is pulling at the seams with what he was attempting is to be admired if going to always catch me off-guard in noticing the tears.

That it comes with the full arm of Hollywood’s resources made Babylon feel greater, a film where everyone from the cinematographer Linus Sandgren to the costume department are on fire here, a vivid lived-in experience here in what is seen onscreen. (The music in particular, composed by Justin Hurwitz, is its own virtue, a vast of multiple instruments interlocking throughout, providing at many points the backbone to the film.) That it is all for this vivid and utterly unpredictable take on a plot line you could have told more conventionally does reveal in itself a virtue, Babylon growing for it. Again, returning to the prologue, this is a white elephant, but in a world where I habit in reverse time, getting out for these type of films in the winter into the spring, than usually run the opposite way by late spring when the blockbusters arrive, that concept of what Manny Faber meant now needs to consider the paradox of genre and franchise films, once b-movies, are now the big films Hollywood want to sell; this is neither a cheap and off-done condemnation of them either, just a considerable that, if the ideal film Hollywood wants to make is no longer the grand drama with a message, that the terms of what folly and pointless expense is now is complicated, especially as, whilst message is muddled due to the subject, God how much I would prefer more Babylons in existence.