Five years after the rather divisive “First Man,” which, in addition to modest box office returns, brought Damien Chazelle strange accusations of being politicized, the even more ambiguous “Babylon” has been released worldwide. This film is a chaotic historical snapshot of an important cinematic era known as the Golden Age of Hollywood. Critics, of course, revolted – after all, film history is sacred to them. Audiences, however, received Chazelle’s new film with much more enthusiasm, perceiving it as an excessively long but still enjoyable hedonistic spectacle, where heartbreaking excess coexists with utterly vulgar satire, and a sincere love for art borders on madness.
A Glimpse into Decadence
“Babylon” opens with a virtuoso-shot scene of a massive freak party taking place somewhere in the backwoods of Los Angeles. It is there that the film’s three main characters first cross paths: Manny Torres (Diego Calva), an aspiring successful producer; Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), an almost-star of silent films; and Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), a popular Hollywood actor. Besides their passion for cinema, all the characters share an insatiable ambition and an almost manic thirst for recognition. Each of them will be used, processed, and ruthlessly spat out by the dream factory, loved and rejected by the world they lived for. Each will have their moment of glory and their personal sad ending, but none of them will ever regret the choices they made.
Homage and Excess
In “Babylon,” Chazelle returns to references, but does so much less subtly than in “La La Land,” at times openly quoting, and sometimes even blatantly copying the style of iconic directors of the past and present. “Babylon” breathes “La Dolce Vita” by Federico Fellini, with Brad Pitt hilariously portraying a bored Marcello Mastroianni. “Babylon” is saturated with the absurd dialogues of the Coen brothers and the dark humor of Tarantino’s comedies, transforming Margot Robbie into Harley Quinn, trying to resemble “Birdman” by Alejandro Iñárritu, but more often simply descending into a fantasy farce, where thoughts of the sublime are interspersed with shots of sperm, urine, and elephant feces.
The Evolution of References
Homages to Gene Kelly no longer need veils; “Singin’ in the Rain” is now a full-fledged part of the film, working for it both in plot and contextual senses. But the conflict between silent and sound cinema, which was an important culmination point in Kelly’s musical, is rather absent in Chazelle’s film. In “Babylon,” there are no conflicts at all, only a continuous biography, a construct of a long-deceased milestone of cinema, born from the mind of a recognized Hollywood wunderkind, who clearly does not intend to compromise or somehow negotiate with the mass audience.
Art Over Life
As a true cinephile, Chazelle made a film primarily for himself, but probably got too carried away in the process. The visual beauty of “Babylon” is not only captivating but also significantly exhausting, the frantic pace leaves no chance to discern social accents, and the constant buffoonery devalues the entire depth of the main characters’ inner tragedy. Nevertheless, by the finale, all questions and indignations gradually fade into the background: after all, “Babylon” is not a classic story of the tragedy of a small person in the big and changing world of show business, as stated in the official synopsis. “Babylon” is a film that exalts art over life, turning it into the sole and perhaps most worthy goal of human existence.