Babylon
Re: Babylon
Good analysis: https://variety.com/2023/film/columns/b ... 235489973/
"How's the despair?"
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Mister Tee
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Re: Babylon
That's actually just the sort of metaphor for which I was searching -- conveying both the achievement and the lack of end result.danfrank wrote:How about: a solid double off the wall where the runner overestimates his own speed and gets thrown out easily at third base, ending the inning. Sorry, couldn’t resist.Mister Tee wrote:I think this project was undoubtedly a big swing, and I wouldn’t describe it as a miss, exactly…but I’m not sure what way to best fill out the baseball metaphor. A looping single? A grounds rule double?
Re: Babylon
How about: a solid double off the wall where the runner overestimates his own speed and gets thrown out easily at third base, ending the inning. Sorry, couldn’t resist.Mister Tee wrote:I think this project was undoubtedly a big swing, and I wouldn’t describe it as a miss, exactly…but I’m not sure what way to best fill out the baseball metaphor. A looping single? A grounds rule double?
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Mister Tee
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Re: Babylon
I'm in agreement with much of what's been written here, though I lean more negative on the film as a whole.
My general take on Chazelle: he’s clearly quite talented, but doesn’t have the intellectual heft to match his filmmaking skills. This isn’t necessarily fatal: I’ve often felt the same about Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino, maybe Guillermo Del Toro. The difference is, those others have usually stayed in their lanes – telling stories in genres (fantasy/history/action) that camouflage these deficiencies. Chazelle, though, deals in ostensibly realistic, character-driven drama, so when his ideas come off as less profound than he imagines -– or when his characters don’t ring fully genuine -– the damage to the work is more significant.
This film didn’t begin well, for me. I'm fully onboard with what dws expressed: the opening half-hour or so felt like it was actively trying to make me bail -- all that excretory excess, the in-your-face debauchery (so ostentatious, yet somehow utterly inauthentic), the aimlessness...I dreaded the idea of enduring 2 1/2 more hours of this. One thing alone worked for me in that entire first-night segment: the dead girl being quietly moved out of the house while everyone's attention was on the elephant. It’s a striking, well-staged visual idea on its own, but it also serves as multi-plot pivot: single-handedly maneuvering both Robbie and Calva from what they were when the evening began –- Hollywood outsiders-looking-in –- to hopefuls having opportunities drop in their laps. This is solid storytelling.
Happily, this one redemptive idea pushed the film in a new, better direction. Once the morning after arrived, and the two young stars relocated to the movie set, the film came beautifully alive, for a decently long stretch. Chazelle does a wonderful job of capturing the free-wheeling, anything-goes atmosphere of early studio Hollywood, and the best part is, he doesn’t have anyone explain it to us in dialogue; he simply lets us see it happening before our very eyes. The vast number of films being shot the same day, the adjustments made on the fly, the discoveries during shooting of just what scenes are about, who the characters are – it all seems part of a wonderful new world, with possibilities so wide open that people must have felt they were inventing something on the spot, so few rules that it all felt both giddy and liberating. It even, retroactively, made the lavish parties more comprehensible: for these people, their workdays were like parties, so why shouldn’t that extend into the night? (Later, when sound arrives, the mere fact characters are now working inside buildings communicates in a flash how different -- how almost corporate -- things would be from then on; how the romance of the seat-of-the-pants era would inevitably fade.)
I enjoyed the entire mid-section of the film: the rise of both Manny and Nellie, the arrival of sound, and the subsequent dislocations. I've always been a sucker for things-go-wrong-onstage scenes, so that extended sequence of something wrecking every shot had me howling with laughter. (It was the one part of the film that made the Golden Globe classification of the film as Comedy seem accurate.) And I found pretty much everything to do with the rise/devolution of Brad Pitt's career engrossing and, ultimately, moving. Though –- nitpick -- I have to say, the scene between him and Jean Smart, where she delivered her “it’s nobody’s fault” take on why his star has faded, was for me oh-so-close but in the end a bit too much: the speech was trenchant in its way, but felt a bit like Chazelle pushing his insight into the mouth of a character who might not have that level of wisdom. I liked where it was trying to take the film –- how it made Pitt’s final act feel inevitable -– but it struck me as Chazelle pushing a bit too hard to make sure his point got across.
Any deficiencies in that storyline, though, pale next to the issues involving the other two main characters. I didn’t fully realize it until the second half, but the film is essentially fatally compromised by centering itself on two damagingly thin characters. Manny is way too passive a protagonist -- he spends most of the movie having things fall in his lap (the elephant, the procure-the-camera job, Sidney Palmer, Nellie); that he applies ingenuity to these windfalls makes him less than a cipher, but everything he does is still essentially reactionary, giving the film (of which he is the prime character) an extremely weak spine. And Nellie is a simply an enraging screw-up -- a variation on DeNiro's JohnnyBoy, there to constantly make messes for someone (most frequently the more responsible Manny) to try and clear up. This becomes progressively more tiresome: I’d pretty much given up on her when she, for not especially clear reasons, sabotaged her comeback by insulting everyone at the party (and providing yet another 2022 over-the-top vomit scene), but I’d truly lost any patience at the point she came crawling to Manny for help with her huge gambling debt. It would have been one thing had we seen what drove her to these levels of self-destruction -- or if there’d been some escalation in her situation; if she’d hit new heights of need for self-abasement every time she reached another career level. But, no: she’s just the same “watch me blow it” person from start to finish, and her screw-ups seem to exist simply for the film to have somewhere to go, rather than illuminating anything about her. I loathe the idea of citing a song that a certain former president often referenced, but, honestly, “You knew darn well I was a snake before you took me in” came to my head, which does not an interesting character create.
This late gambling-debt plot point also created possibly the most revolting part of the film, which dws referenced: the descent into hell hosted by Tobey “I don’t know what he’s doing/I hope he never does it again” Maguire. The sequence isn’t even particularly original -– it feels like a blend of the Jessie’s Girl scene from Boogie Night and the finale of Under the Volcano –- and, like the film’s opening, relies on shock and disgust (freaks! alligators! guns!) more than anything interesting in character terms. (It also, essentially, climaxes with an inexplicable scene: Manny somehow spared where two others are not – an atypical early-century example of Hispanics being treated better than white counterparts.) I’m not saying there aren’t worthy moments even at this point in the film –- the shot of Nellie dancing her way into the darkness shows Chazelle will always have an instinct for the memorable picture. But I felt like, because of the deficiencies in the two should-be-central characters, things dribbled away in this almost-last part of the film.
Almost-, because there was of course that epilogue, which was…something. I’m really not sure what Chazelle was trying to convey in this. At first, I thought he was simply pointing up a contrast between Singin’ in the Rain (till now, the last word on the transition-to-sound era) and his purportedly more realistic take. But he ran so much footage from the film –- to the point I wondered about copyright infringement –- that it felt like he must have something more in mind. This was then followed by History of Film Since Creation montage, whose point may have eluded me. Is he really saying everything from Un Chien Andalou to Terminator 2 is all part of the same magic of movies? If so, a pretty banal take with which to end his opus. Though I did like Manny’s tears, and how they evoked Nellie’s tears on-set from the earlier scene.
I think this project was undoubtedly a big swing, and I wouldn’t describe it as a miss, exactly…but I’m not sure what way to best fill out the baseball metaphor. A looping single? A grounds rule double? Whatever it is, it’s not a home run, and, at this particular moment in the film business, ambitious projects have enough trouble attracting audiences even when they are. This apparent financial debacle will doubtless hurt the chances of future such expensive big swings ever being allowed. It happens I just finished a terrific book called Mercury Pictures Presents, also a Hollywood period piece (this one during WWII), which has better drawn characters than Babylon, and might make a wonderful film…but Babylon’s face-plant probably eliminates the slightest possibility it'll ever happen. So, while I’m, as always, appreciative of a director using his acquired clout to make something audacious, I have to regret this particular effort possibly doing a lot of harm to the general good.
My general take on Chazelle: he’s clearly quite talented, but doesn’t have the intellectual heft to match his filmmaking skills. This isn’t necessarily fatal: I’ve often felt the same about Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino, maybe Guillermo Del Toro. The difference is, those others have usually stayed in their lanes – telling stories in genres (fantasy/history/action) that camouflage these deficiencies. Chazelle, though, deals in ostensibly realistic, character-driven drama, so when his ideas come off as less profound than he imagines -– or when his characters don’t ring fully genuine -– the damage to the work is more significant.
This film didn’t begin well, for me. I'm fully onboard with what dws expressed: the opening half-hour or so felt like it was actively trying to make me bail -- all that excretory excess, the in-your-face debauchery (so ostentatious, yet somehow utterly inauthentic), the aimlessness...I dreaded the idea of enduring 2 1/2 more hours of this. One thing alone worked for me in that entire first-night segment: the dead girl being quietly moved out of the house while everyone's attention was on the elephant. It’s a striking, well-staged visual idea on its own, but it also serves as multi-plot pivot: single-handedly maneuvering both Robbie and Calva from what they were when the evening began –- Hollywood outsiders-looking-in –- to hopefuls having opportunities drop in their laps. This is solid storytelling.
Happily, this one redemptive idea pushed the film in a new, better direction. Once the morning after arrived, and the two young stars relocated to the movie set, the film came beautifully alive, for a decently long stretch. Chazelle does a wonderful job of capturing the free-wheeling, anything-goes atmosphere of early studio Hollywood, and the best part is, he doesn’t have anyone explain it to us in dialogue; he simply lets us see it happening before our very eyes. The vast number of films being shot the same day, the adjustments made on the fly, the discoveries during shooting of just what scenes are about, who the characters are – it all seems part of a wonderful new world, with possibilities so wide open that people must have felt they were inventing something on the spot, so few rules that it all felt both giddy and liberating. It even, retroactively, made the lavish parties more comprehensible: for these people, their workdays were like parties, so why shouldn’t that extend into the night? (Later, when sound arrives, the mere fact characters are now working inside buildings communicates in a flash how different -- how almost corporate -- things would be from then on; how the romance of the seat-of-the-pants era would inevitably fade.)
I enjoyed the entire mid-section of the film: the rise of both Manny and Nellie, the arrival of sound, and the subsequent dislocations. I've always been a sucker for things-go-wrong-onstage scenes, so that extended sequence of something wrecking every shot had me howling with laughter. (It was the one part of the film that made the Golden Globe classification of the film as Comedy seem accurate.) And I found pretty much everything to do with the rise/devolution of Brad Pitt's career engrossing and, ultimately, moving. Though –- nitpick -- I have to say, the scene between him and Jean Smart, where she delivered her “it’s nobody’s fault” take on why his star has faded, was for me oh-so-close but in the end a bit too much: the speech was trenchant in its way, but felt a bit like Chazelle pushing his insight into the mouth of a character who might not have that level of wisdom. I liked where it was trying to take the film –- how it made Pitt’s final act feel inevitable -– but it struck me as Chazelle pushing a bit too hard to make sure his point got across.
Any deficiencies in that storyline, though, pale next to the issues involving the other two main characters. I didn’t fully realize it until the second half, but the film is essentially fatally compromised by centering itself on two damagingly thin characters. Manny is way too passive a protagonist -- he spends most of the movie having things fall in his lap (the elephant, the procure-the-camera job, Sidney Palmer, Nellie); that he applies ingenuity to these windfalls makes him less than a cipher, but everything he does is still essentially reactionary, giving the film (of which he is the prime character) an extremely weak spine. And Nellie is a simply an enraging screw-up -- a variation on DeNiro's JohnnyBoy, there to constantly make messes for someone (most frequently the more responsible Manny) to try and clear up. This becomes progressively more tiresome: I’d pretty much given up on her when she, for not especially clear reasons, sabotaged her comeback by insulting everyone at the party (and providing yet another 2022 over-the-top vomit scene), but I’d truly lost any patience at the point she came crawling to Manny for help with her huge gambling debt. It would have been one thing had we seen what drove her to these levels of self-destruction -- or if there’d been some escalation in her situation; if she’d hit new heights of need for self-abasement every time she reached another career level. But, no: she’s just the same “watch me blow it” person from start to finish, and her screw-ups seem to exist simply for the film to have somewhere to go, rather than illuminating anything about her. I loathe the idea of citing a song that a certain former president often referenced, but, honestly, “You knew darn well I was a snake before you took me in” came to my head, which does not an interesting character create.
This late gambling-debt plot point also created possibly the most revolting part of the film, which dws referenced: the descent into hell hosted by Tobey “I don’t know what he’s doing/I hope he never does it again” Maguire. The sequence isn’t even particularly original -– it feels like a blend of the Jessie’s Girl scene from Boogie Night and the finale of Under the Volcano –- and, like the film’s opening, relies on shock and disgust (freaks! alligators! guns!) more than anything interesting in character terms. (It also, essentially, climaxes with an inexplicable scene: Manny somehow spared where two others are not – an atypical early-century example of Hispanics being treated better than white counterparts.) I’m not saying there aren’t worthy moments even at this point in the film –- the shot of Nellie dancing her way into the darkness shows Chazelle will always have an instinct for the memorable picture. But I felt like, because of the deficiencies in the two should-be-central characters, things dribbled away in this almost-last part of the film.
Almost-, because there was of course that epilogue, which was…something. I’m really not sure what Chazelle was trying to convey in this. At first, I thought he was simply pointing up a contrast between Singin’ in the Rain (till now, the last word on the transition-to-sound era) and his purportedly more realistic take. But he ran so much footage from the film –- to the point I wondered about copyright infringement –- that it felt like he must have something more in mind. This was then followed by History of Film Since Creation montage, whose point may have eluded me. Is he really saying everything from Un Chien Andalou to Terminator 2 is all part of the same magic of movies? If so, a pretty banal take with which to end his opus. Though I did like Manny’s tears, and how they evoked Nellie’s tears on-set from the earlier scene.
I think this project was undoubtedly a big swing, and I wouldn’t describe it as a miss, exactly…but I’m not sure what way to best fill out the baseball metaphor. A looping single? A grounds rule double? Whatever it is, it’s not a home run, and, at this particular moment in the film business, ambitious projects have enough trouble attracting audiences even when they are. This apparent financial debacle will doubtless hurt the chances of future such expensive big swings ever being allowed. It happens I just finished a terrific book called Mercury Pictures Presents, also a Hollywood period piece (this one during WWII), which has better drawn characters than Babylon, and might make a wonderful film…but Babylon’s face-plant probably eliminates the slightest possibility it'll ever happen. So, while I’m, as always, appreciative of a director using his acquired clout to make something audacious, I have to regret this particular effort possibly doing a lot of harm to the general good.
Re: Babylon
I think you both make great points (particularly with the underdevelopment of the central romance) but it's such a vital, exhilarating film that I almost don't care. I'm particularly fascinated by that contrast in tones that dws mentioned/wanting to be both a love letter and a poison pill - I actually think it basically pulls it off. I want to sit and ponder, but my first feeling after the film finished was that I needed to see it again.
Re: Babylon
Hamilton is really good. One of my gauges of a good supporting/featured performance is whether I would follow them into their own movie, and I definitely would follow Hamilton into a movie about the Dorothy Arzner-type character she plays here.
Re: Babylon
Hamilton is Chazelle's wife.Sabin wrote:Favorite performance: Olivia Hamilton as the director. Never seen her before. Good comic timing.
Re: Babylon
Same. Honestly, I'll cosign just about everything that you said, from the arbitrary gangster elements to how amazing the silent film set sequences were. It's a wild bananas film with a lot to hate about it. At times, it almost begs people to hate it. Ultimately, I found myself endeared by what a big swing it is — going after a major swath of film history in three hours. Like La La Land, it's another young man's movie, especially when it comes to the depiction of debauchery. That's clearly where it's at its weakest. I read a review on Letterboxd that described the film as "a three hour episode of drunk history directed by a sober Criterion Collector." This is an unsexy movie full of "outrageous" scenes in quotation marks. Even worse, I never for a moment believed that this film took place in the 1920's and 1930's. Even if production design and wardrobes are era-appropriate (which I don't know), they don't feel era-appropriate. Too often it feels like Millennials play-acting. But after I got past the first act which does a poor job of setting up just about everything (especially the potentially affecting Diego Calva and Margot Robbie almost-romance), I fell into it a bit more. It's works best as a collection of very strong scenes set to an intoxicating hustle.dws1982 wrote
Mentally went through every possible star rating that Letterboxd allows, from 1/2 to 5, at least twice through the run time.
I think this movie needed more than just a rewrite or another round of editing. I think this is a movie that never quite got out of the idea stage. Damien Chazelle was chasing something with this film that's pretty beautiful and I don't think he got it. But I can see enough of that vision to be charmed enough by it. Swing and a miss but a good, recommendable (with caution) effort.
MORNING AFTER THOUGHT: I've gone down a bit on Babylon. I'm still decisively mixed but I don't think it accomplishes enough of its goals. As a poison pill to cinema, it's too silly to take seriously. As a love letter to cinema, it's too coked up to get beyond the infatuation stage. And it really gets off on the wrong foot. I wish the film had done more to bring us into the Calva-Robbie almost-relationship from the get go. I think the movie wants to have it both ways at the beginning. It wants to start with a shock (the elephant) but also cross-cut around to all these little stories around a big party. That thing requires a grace that Chazelle either doesn't have or demonstrate.
Babylon possibly needed a rewrite or pushed back and another round of editing. If Elvis played in the summer, maybe this could have? But more eyes needed to be on it. That said, glad this film exists in some form.
Favorite performance: Olivia Hamilton as the director. Never seen her before. Good comic timing. Or maybe Justin Hurwitz who comes up with a lovely, woozy love theme that deserved a movie to match.
Last edited by Sabin on Fri Dec 30, 2022 10:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"How's the despair?"
Re: Babylon
It does deserve its own thread.
My post from earlier:
My post from earlier:
It's been spoiled in some reviews, but try not to spoil yourself on the ending of this. Some loved it, some hated it, but you would never in a thousand lifetimes guess what it will be. I thought it was hilarious, absolutely insane, in line with everything else in this film.Saw Babylon this morning.
A quote like "we won't see a movie like this again" sounds like so much hyperbole, but the truth is, we probably won't. This type of big-budget studio film is all but dead and will not be made more alive by this losing its entire budget. Mentally went through every possible star rating that Letterboxd allows, from 1/2 to 5, at least twice through the run time. It's a wild, insane movie, just incredible that a major studio would back it. The opening scene, which shows an elephant's asshole in close-up, is a dare to dislike it. The entire pre-title-drop sequence will send some people for the door, and I can't blame them. (It almost sent me, just because I was tired, also note that the title drop is like ~35 minutes in.) Not long after the title drop, when we get on movie sets are some of the best scenes and sequences of the year--one in particular that goes from set to set is astonishing. Would've liked it considerably more if it weren't for, around the time the movie should be and could be wrapping up, a diversion that brings in gangsters, sex-dungeons and chases in what mainly seems like an excuse to go into action-movie territory for a few minutes. That diversion does serve to wrap up a character arc, but that character arc could've been wrapped up without all of that, and the way that character's story resolves (which is inevitable and predictable) is exactly what you would've expected without that. Also, that diversion is interrupted with a diversion to wrap up another character's arc and it's incredibly jarring because it is very different in tone from the action sequence we've been watching. As top-notch technically as Chazelle's last couple of movies, maybe even stronger in some respects, but man, I don't know. Much more to say about this, but I'll hold off until more people see it.