Babylon

Babylon is what happens when a young filmmaker's previous movie is a critical, commercial and award-winning success, and he gets to do a follow up feature with little restrictions or reigning in.  Damien Chazelle's follow up to his crowd-pleasing La La Land is the total opposite of his previous film, both in style and in story.  If his last picture was a romantic love letter to classic Hollywood musicals, then this is a self-indulgent three hour-plus look at the debauchery of classic Hollywood excess that ends up a bloated and flat-footed mess.

Just what happened here?  Was there no one present to tell him that his scenes go on far too long, and hit the same stylistic and dramatic notes over and over?  Watching the film is akin to watching a talented cast giving the material their all, while millions of dollars in sets, costumes, and recreating a bygone age are burned before our eyes.  The movie wants to lift the curtain on classic Hollywood by following a set of fictional stars as they turn to drugs, alcohol, and elaborate parties to dull the pain of the change that happened in the industry when movies changed from silent to "Talkies".  We're supposed to be shocked, but we never are, because Chazelle is too focused on his wildly out of control budget and production to squeeze any emotion out of his characters.

And yet, there are moments and individual performances that stand out here.  There's one subplot of the film that I think could have been successfully dissected from the overwhelming bloat of this film, and make a nice, small little movie.  That concerns a character named Sidney Palmer (played by Jovan Adepo), a black jazz trumpet player who gets his big break, gets to appear on screen, and live the lavish lifestyle that few could have dreamed.  Reality quickly hits when he finds himself attending parties where no one is truly interested in him, and when he is asked to darken his skin color on the set so that it won't appear he's lighter skinned than the rest of the orchestra he's playing with in a film scene.  

I thought his character arc stripped away of the movie surrounding it could have really been something.  What does his family and friends think of his success?  What's it like being a black celebrity in the 1920s and 30s?  Did he enjoy his success before the reality hit him?  A decent writer could mine a lot out of this material, and make something compelling.  Instead, Babylon is focused on three main characters mostly.  There's primarily Manny (Diego Calva), a Mexican American who is supposed to act as our eyes into the film's world.  He starts out assisting a wild Hollywood party by having to transport an elephant who's supposed to be part of the elaborate set up.  He has dreams of working in the industry, and we follow his journey from a wide-eyed innocent on the outside, to having a chance encounter with one of the biggest silent movie stars of the time, becoming his personal assistant, to helping out on film sets, to getting a position of power at a studio.

The star that Manny begins his career in Hollywood assisting is Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), who during the course of the film goes through many turbulent marriages, and finds his status fade as the industry begins to change.  Another person Manny meets at the party is Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a starlet who becomes an overnight sensation after a bit part leads to a sought after career in film, and then crumbles due to her addiction to drugs and gambling.  We follow these three characters as they rise, fall, get involved with organized crime, face personal tragedy, and deal with Hollywood's leading gossip columnist (Jean Smart), who gets a great scene late in the film when she talks to Jack about how his career is over, but that he should just be happy that he will live forever in some way on film.

All of this is told with dull predictability, with scenes that seem to go on much longer than they should.  One such example is when we get to see Nellie film her first scene for a "Talkie", and the difficulty she has hitting her mark, as well as the crew using sound equipment for the first time.  I understand that Chazelle is supposed to be showing us the frustration and repetitive nature of filmmaking, but when the scene seems to drag on close to 15 minutes, I was just ready for it to end.  The whole movie is kind of like that.  It occasionally hits on a good scene or performance, but largely, the movie is just too stretched out and obvious to be of much interest.  It's a mix of madcap excess, tragedy and personal drama, and it often comes across as scattered, bloated, and kind of sloppy.

Babylon tells us that the old days of Hollywood were full of scandal, pain, depression, and isolation.  I don't think anyone needs to spend 189 minutes hearing that.  Obviously, the over blown nature of the film is intentional, but unless you're someone like Baz Luhrmann, who is an expert on making excess in film work, you run the risk of alienating your audience, and that's exactly what Chazelle did with me here.

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