Damien Chazelle established himself as a passionate admirer of jazz long ago with Whiplash, La La Land, and Netflix’s underseen series The Eddy. He goes the extra mile with Babylon, his latest feature which concludes an unofficial cinematic trilogy centered on devoted but complicated artists. From start to finish, Babylon is an excessive, indulgent, and utterly chaotic vision of 1920s Hollywood. It is simultaneously an anti-love letter and bittersweet ode to cinema, the Golden Age in particular, and filmmaking.
In the lead-up to an extravagant Hollywood party, we meet Manny Torres (newcomer Diego Calva), a Spanish immigrant who is hired to transport an elephant to the host mansion and takes advantage of the opportunity to get his foot in the door of the film industry. Once we’re taken to the lavish, drug-fueled fever dream of an evening, we are introduced to the rest of the film’s main characters: movie star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt); Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), an aspiring actress who eventually gets her big break after being spotted at the party; trumpet player Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo); and the Anna May Wong-inspired Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li).
Babylon charts the brutal transitional period from silent-era cinema to the rise of synchronized sound films. The demands of an ever-changing Hollywood landscape are difficult to grapple with as actors and filmmakers are forced to keep up with the additional requirements that come with making talkies, like standing directly on mark and not speaking too loudly or quietly into the microphone, and Babylon examines the effects through an opulent lens. Skyrocketed into superstardom after captivating everyone with her ability to cry on cue, Rhode Island-raised Nellie is unable to fully adapt to the atmosphere as she struggles with memorizing her lines and the refinement level expected in social settings. Jack is an actor in his prime who struggles to maintain his place as an in-demand Hollywood darling in this new era. Meanwhile, Manny’s aspirations become a reality after he gets the opportunity to be an assistant on film productions and quickly works his way up the ladder. Manny learns to adapt to the rapidly developing industry, but people like Nellie are easily disposable due to her inability to live up to industry standards.
The supporting ensemble is full of familiar faces, with a scene-stealing Jean Smart as a gossip columnist, Spike Jonze as an exasperated German director, Samara Weaving as an actress who feels threatened by Nellie’s magnetic presence, and Katherine Waterston and Olivia Wilde making appearances as two of Jack’s ex-wives. But in a film full of flashy performances, Calva steals the show as someone who serves as the audience’s surrogate and excellently portrays his ambitiousness and love for the pictures.
Robbie, while spellbinding in her energetic performance as Nellie, can’t escape how underwritten and one-dimensional the character is. It’s an issue that plagues Babylon, which is frequently more concerned with maximalism than actual character arcs. Nellie is a damaged woman who often gets referred to as a “wild child” and, like the majority of the women in the film, exists in service of or is defined by the men in her orbit. Despite being three hours in length, Babylon manages to gloss over some of its most interesting characters and narratives, such as Sidney Palmer and Lady Fay Zhu, who are sidelined and used to further other storylines.
Babylon is at its strongest when diving into how films were made during the silent era, large-scale sets and all, but falls flat when pivoting to narratives that end up being cliché-ridden. Everything from the over-the-top production design to the costumes and mesmerizing cinematography is masterful. Chazelle’s frequent collaborator Justin Hurwitz continues to stun with an incredible score that samples from and expands upon his work on La La Land and perfectly underscores the unhinged events that unfold.
Despite a handful of issues, including an underdeveloped romance between Manny and Nellie that spirals in the final act, Babylon is undeniably a thrilling epic that works best when focusing on the inner workings of a turbulent period in Hollywood. Chazelle clearly has a reverence for the story he is telling, and while it may fall flat at some points in its three-hour length, he manages to pull together the web of threads within the film.
