FILM REVIEW: "BABYLON" BUBBLES AND BOILS WITH VICE & VIRTUE
At 37 years of age, Damien Chazelle became the youngest ever Best Director Oscar recipient. It was his stereophonic love story writ in the tangerine starscape of Los Angeles, La La Land, that brought him financial and critical success. In Babylon, shaken free of studio strings, he traces the golden age of cinema straight through the thick smog that caped the lucky stars in the sky.
Babylon is a tour de force of excess and decadence, a three-hour epic following the rise and fall of Hollywood alumni, Nellie LaRoy (the illustrious Margot Robbie) a bebop babe who shakes the paint of the walls, Manny Torres (first-timer Diego Calva) the nubile go-getter for the eccentric Jack Conrad (a terrific Brad Pratt), a silent actor who can’t parallel the man he portrays on screen.
Babylon is a lightning strike, it’s a whirlwind through Oz, it’s a technicolour daydream, it’s a stereoscopic nightmare. The spectacle sweeps through the broiling ballrooms of Hollywood affairs, with brass thundering overhead and golden glamour wreaking havoc like a hurricane with human eyes. It chases from hillside mansions caught in sunrise’s eternal glare to the maiming undercurrents of morlock crime. Bubonic battlefields baptised by dying suns and draconian burrows of giggling madmen, Babylon leaps from the heart to the stage to the screen. It dives from glamour to crass with the jests of a prince left half-amphibious by romantic rapture, unsure if it loves or hates the sight of itself. Babylon burrows into the sockets and forces itself to be seen, and we stand witness to an acetone love story wrought on the eye like a stranger’s spectacles and a maddening knowledge that when the curtain closes the characters you love wither to pieces. And no man, left living or dead, could stand to attest that Babylon does not deserve its runtime.
Damien Chazelle’s bleeding heart beats onto the screen once again, and though the rhythm is not as convincing nor as serene as his previous ventures, his adoration for film parallels his love for music, albeit with more bravado and chaos. At first, undistinguished, Babylon waltzes with a drunken stupor through its manic first act before converging steadily into a winding chronicle of unchecked amour propre. Margot Robbie sparkles like a rhinestone diamond as the backstreet Nellie LaRoy, a rising star with a kaleidoscopic gaze on the world around her, and a tempestuous attitude towards the elites she is now forced to reckon with. Diego Calva, in his first major role, is just as convincing as the tireless Manuel, who ascends through the upper echelons of studio Hollywood with his go-getter attitude. Brad Pitt is utterly hilarious as the wife-swapping Jack Conrad, a silent film star who’s let the craft escape him. Tobey McGuire passes through with a gusting sweep as Jack Conrad, an underworldly figure who proves excessive drugs and alcohol are only the surface of depravity. Jovan Adepo blasts through the film as Sidney Palmer, an aspiring trumpeter caught in the crossfire of Hollywood’s facades.
Precarious as it may be at times, Babylon is a splendour, a craft so pristine and bountiful it must be seen to be believed. Dredging the golden ghosts and salacious spirits of the roaring 20’s, Chazelle once again finds dreamers faced with impenetrable odds. The all-star cast meets the might of this bombastic feature and fill the screen with their presence and being – every scene is stolen and not a word is wasted. So beautiful is Linus Sandgren’s cinematography that the darkened haunts in the corner of your eyes seem absconded by the sheer velocity and virtue of the screen. Likewise, Justin Hurwitz vivacious roar of brass reaches the audiences ear like the screams of the killer of the silent film star.
Babylon is dizzying and electrifying, it’s not for the faint of heart nor the pure of soul. It’s divisive and esoteric, but for those ready and willing to wander its gargantuan runtime and indulge in the luxuries of its scope, it proves to be a methodical and beautiful portrait of chaos run rife. Though, and in accordance with the endless and exuberant lifestyles and parties it portrays, when the music begins to dwindle, Babylon isn’t entirely sure how to end – by then you’ll either be asleep, or dreading the curtains are finally coming to a close.
