Damien Chazelle's Babylon (2022) is in equal parts an ardent love letter for and fervent cautionary tale against the film-making industry, as told by a Shakespearean five-act film, marked by abrupt cut-to-black endings and a timeskip to the next significant point in time. And in typical Shakespearean tragedy fashion, none of the characters are whole people, but personas through which the audience is able to understand who the warning is really for.
As for what the warning is, it is quite simple—there are only three ways you leave the industry once you're in: you walk with your head high before it all goes sour, you escape by the skin of your teeth as it sucks you dry, or you let the industry consume you whole. We see these play out through four different characters. Nellie, who comes in dazzling and fizzles out into the dark; Manuel, making a steady rise up through the ranks before watching it all crash around his ears; Jack, the industry icon who watches it all slip through his fingers as the industry revolutionises too quickly for him to catch up; and Sidney, the trumpeteer who is cowed once and once only.
So with all of this vitriol around the industry and the evils it poses, how could a tenderness possibly have been weaved into its calamitous tapestry?
Because, as in-film film critic Elinor St. John puts it, "There will be a hundred more Jack Conrads. There will be a hundred more me's, and a hundred more conversations just like this. Because this is bigger than us." Much earlier in the film, and later reprised in the movie's final scene, Manny answers Nellie's question of why he wants to be on a movie set, "I want to be part of something bigger than this." The admittedly borderline-cringe montage of film-making, from silent black-and-white pictures to Blockbuster hit Avatar, is the closing statement in Chazelle's thesis defending cinema and movie-making. For all its faults, Chazelle seems to be saying, isn't it all so glorious? Is there really anything else in the world that could compare to this?
Like all depictions of artists (I'm thinking of fidelist Colm from The Banshees of Inisherin, which I had just watched days ago), all an artist wants to be is remembered through their craft. And despite the gruesome end to Jack's and Nellie's life, we see that two decades after the main events of the film, their stories are memorialised in 1952's Dancing In The Rain, a film Manny impulsively goes to watch and leaves him in a tear-streaked smile — the final shot of the film. Tragically, or perhaps just curiously, those that most need to heed the warnings of this film are the ones who are doomed to live through it.
The acting throughout this film never wavered in superiority; perhaps unsurprising given the talent (Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, et cetera, et cetera). But the two standout performances for me were Diego Calva and Li Jun Li. Considering the nature of these characters to be the milder, grounded antithesis to Robbie's and Pitt's big-Hollywood-starisms, every non-speaking shot, every flicker of movement, every delivered line had me unable to look away. While arguably being less the focus of the story, I was on the edge of my seat anticipating their next moment.
If anything, Margot Robbie's attempts at playing sapphic might be the one blight on an otherwise impeccable performance. I blame it on chronic heterosexuality.
For those who worry about the screentime, ("A whopping 189 minutes," says avclub.com) fret not. I myself went in unsure of how engaged I would be by the halfway mark, especially with the gratuitous amounts of partying that seemed to fluff most of the entire first act, but found myself forgetting all about the passage of time once the drama of the movie really got going. In fact, even the pornographic and/or bodily fluid-filled fillers never detract from the watching experience. I would describe it like reading a 19th century novel written, where authors would dedicate half a chapter to describing minute details of one room, because the room itself was a character in its own right.
Obviously, given how important a role music and sound played in the in-world universe, not nearly enough can be said about the composing of the show. The raucous trumpets, the upbeat jazz tempo, whatever else I don't know nearly enough about to put down but thoroughly enjoyed anyway.
The visuals too, as instrumented by the colour grading and costume department, were an irreplaceable element in bringing the story to life. Never had I watched a story about the 1920s, infamous for its grandeur and depravity alike, really show just how vibrant and revolting times were back then. There were no allusions to flapper girls or dingy speakeasies. This movie was made to glorify the rich and famous, who unchangingly indulge in only the best. Cue Manny robotically listing all the different drugs stored in the production executive's house.
Upon leaving the cinema, I couldn't help but wrack my brain for possible reasons the general public may have for disliking the movie. Was it perhaps the graphic content? Impossible, those faded to background after the first or second act, and were deliberately done to contrast it with how clean and controlled movie-making becomes. Was it the runtime? That couldn't be right either, with how quickly time whizzed by. In fact, even now I could not tell you what might be cause for all the controversy. Babylon is a modern masterpiece, and in my humble opinion Chazelle's strongest work to date. And now that its’ release to VOD platforms is soon approaching, I encourage everyone to give this movie a chance to blow you away.