Babylon feels like it goes too far. PHOTO CREDIT: Babylonmovie.com
From director Damien Chazelle comes his latest work “Babylon,” a very ambitious film which showcases the evolution of early Hollywood, from silent to sound films.
This is being told through the perspective of three main characters, Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a Mexican immigrant who wants to make his way up the Hollywood chain, Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), an aspiring and ambitious actress from New Jersey looking to make it big and Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), a Hollywood superstar at the height of his fame.
This seems like a pretty simple and laid out premise for a film, and it is, however problems start arising when all of these plotlines are stretched out exponentially due to the film’s lengthy runtime of over three hours long. A three hour movie is already something that will cause a lot of people to throw up their hands and say, “Alright, I’m out” before they walk into the theater, and I would like to say that there’s a reason why the film has this length, but there really isn’t.
The characters’ arcs are very basic. They go the way you think they’re going to go, and don’t really feel like they have much depth to them which hurts the characters as a result as this makes them more forgettable. This is a shame to say as I found myself enjoying the actors’ performances.
Another problem in having three main characters as sometimes the film choses to focus on one particular character and shove the others to the side. Initially, I thought that Manny was going to be the anchor character and have the most time dedicated to him, since he was the first character introduced. However, by the middle of the film, I felt he was pushed off to the wayside.
There are also scenes within the film that felt too slow or drawn out, such as when Margot Robbie’s character says she’s going to fight a snake, which she does, but the buildup to it was slow and the only use of this scene was to push along a subplot for a secondary character.
Oh, did I mention there were even more characters the film focuses on?
It just feels like Chazelle wanted to make the film feel like it has a grand and wide-reaching scale, but I really feel like he went too far with that idea. Probably the biggest thing that irked me through was the film’s ending.
Don’t worry, this is only a miniscule spoiler.
The ending shows us a montage of films from different eras starting from the beginning of cinema to the present day as the score booms with grandeur, and I couldn’t help but feel like Chazelle was being too indulgent towards Hollywood. I feel like the film would have captured the exact same feeling if it just cut to Chazelle holding up a sign that says, “Hey Hollywood! Do I get a Best Picture Nom Yet?”
While now it sounds like I’m heavily trashing the film, there are some aspects of it that I really enjoyed. For instance, the production design was great. I felt that it really captured the era the film is showcasing very effectively, the same can be said for the costumes and the score as well.
Like I said before, I also really enjoyed some of the performances, especially from Margot Robbie and Diego Calva, who I felt worked really well with the material they were given. There were also a few scenes which I enjoyed, my favorite of which was at the beginning of the film where we are shown an over exaggerated view of how chaotic and unrestricted filmmaking was during the 1920’s, as a battle scene being filmed which leads to cast and crew members getting injured in a ridiculous amount of ways while everyone treats it as normal.
Manny races to go get a camera and is forced to wait a grueling period of time at the rental place to get it, which felt very relatable to me as a film major. While all this is happening, Pitt’s character gets completely hammered and in the end manages to pull off his climactic scene perfectly. I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of all of it.
All around “Babylon” is a pretty rough package. It’s crude, far too long and at worst it can feel like Oscar-bait, but it can sometimes be a pretty fun, off the walls romp through early Hollywood with some great performances.
Overall, I’ll give it six tweaked out Toby Maguries out of ten, a solid experience but something I don’t think I’ll revisit anytime soon. Watch the film and see what you think of it!
