Damien Chazelle is one of the best young directors alive today. And in that group of young greats,
he is the youngest, at 37 as of the time of this writing. He turns 38 on January 19th
. He’s already won
an Oscar for Best Director, for La La Land, and been nominated twice more, both for screenplay
writing: Best Original Screenplay in 2015 for Whiplash; and for his Adapted Screenplay in 2017 for
La La Land. Chazelle is that rare writer/director who, after his first, makes only great films. His five
feature films as director, with the exception of his first, are at worst very good: 2009’s Guy and
Madeline on a Park Bench is terrible, particularly the lead actor (Jason Palmer, who plays Guy), but
it already displayed his signature characteristic, that composer Justin Hurwitz’s scores are key to his
films; his penultimate movie, 2018’s First Man, a biopic on Neil Armstrong is very good; and the
aforementioned Whiplash (2014) and La La Land (2016), and the topic of this review, Babylon, are
all great motion pictures!
Babylon is the hilarious, jarring, sad, shocking, and every-other-emotion-generating story of the
early days of Hollywood at its decadent peak, in the Roaring ’20s. It revolves around the changes
that the city and industry went through as a result of the talkies, beginning with Alan Crosland’s “The
Jazz Singer”, the first talking movie, starring Al Jolson. Babylon tells the story of silent star Jack
Conrad (Brad Pitt) and his struggles to acclimate to the new technology. The movie begins in the Bel
Air section of Los Angeles in 1926 (when hardly anyone in Hollywood had even an inkling of the
talkies soon to come, including Conrad) at a huge nudity & sex & drugs & jazz party in a mansion.
He meets Manny Torres (Diego Calva), an Angeleno born in Mexico who moved to L.A. with his
parents as a young boy, a do-whatever-he-can-for-a-movie man, charged with bringing an elephant
to the party; and party-crasher Nelly LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a super hot, sexy, wannabe actress.
After Manny shows Nellie the back room where the party favors are hidden, and they put a dent in a
gigantic Close Encounters of the Cocaine Kind pile of the drug, they reveal their mutual desire to
want nothing more than to be on a movie set. When they get to the crazy, debauchery of the dance
floor orgy, Nellie, Manny and Jack’s adventures kick into high gear as the all-black hot jazz band
jams into the night. The next day, Manny & Nellie’s dreams of working on a movie set come true.
But, alas, every silver screen’s got a…touch of grey. For technology ever marches on, for better and
for worse, as we see in Terminator 2, one of the many clips of other movies incorporated in Babylon.
And like Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) in Singin’ in the Rain – another of the films that’s shown in
Babylon, and really its 1952 counterpart, exploring a similar plot, but with themes more relevant to
the conservatism of the ’50s – Jack Conrad struggles adapting to the talkies. Nellie’s tendency to
over-indulge in all of life’s temptations, and Manny’s obsession with her, are barriers to their
transitions. And 189 minutes after the start of the film, one feels like Dante returning from The
Inferno, both metaphorically and literally.
A Must See, 4-Star epic masterpiece!!!
- Paul is the host for The Hub on Canal’s monthly Art in the Form of Film Series. The Hub on Canal
is a
non-profit art gallery/collective on Canal Street, NSB.
