Rent Babylon (2022)

Babylon review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Babylon is a chaotic movie that takes the wildest elements of Damien Chazelle’s filmmaking and dials it up to 11. It’s a bold, brash, and musically driven showcase of old Hollywood’s glamorous allure and grotesque darkness. It’s a film that can highlight the fun of a celebrity party yet still not shy away from aspects of shattered relationships, dead hookers, and elephant poop that peppers the party. And that’s just in the first five minutes. Wait until you see the wild sights provided by Tobey Maguire as a creepy mobster.

The film starts in the 1920s when filmmaking made you feel immortal and ends in the 1950s, when sound and color changed everything. During those party days, we follow a few troubled yet hopeful dreamers. Nellie (Margot Robbie) is a bombshell who parties so hard at the biggest events that she ends up with an acting gig. Manny (Diego Calva) is an assistant who is timid at first but works his way right into the graces of working alongside filmmakers. Manny, in particular, gets his big break from the acclaimed yet drunk and disloyal actor Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt). He can act in epics easily for the silent era but fumbles hard when his voice needs to be recorded.

What follows is the rise and fall of the many careers of those involved in cinema's progress. Manny goes from the seat-of-his-pants assistant who races through traffic to deliver a replacement camera to deciding which films to greenlight. Nellie goes from lying in parties to acting her way into the big leagues, being recognized as a sexy actor in many scandalous pictures. Jack lavishes in the vice of it all, appreciating the booze and wives as they come with acting gigs that feel so easy he can have a hefty portion of drinks before delivering his big romantic scene for a war epic.

We also follow a few supporting players who struggle to maintain their presence in Hollywood. Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo) is a jazz trumpeter who progressively moves up from being a player at parties to a star in movie orchestras, albeit forced into some uncomfortable racist situations on and off the sets. Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li) is a lesbian cabaret singer who knows how to play the game well enough that she can go fairly far in show business, while Jack merely sinks with the advent of sound. Elinor St. John (Jean Smart) is the most sage of movie writers who is aware of her career’s twilight, the very mortality of the industry figures, and the immortality of movies themselves.

The film gets playful with its satirization of Hollywood and moviemaking, existing between a love letter and a death threat. There are inspiring passages from Manny and Nellie about how they feel you can live forever in movies. Later, there will be a savage commentary on the technical aspects of movies adopting sound. Jack questions why anybody would want sound in movies while we, the audience, listen to someone pooping loudly in a toilet stall. This knowing nature of Pandora’s box is filmmaking, and director Damien Chazelle wields well.

Chazelle crowds the screen with an onslaught of guest stars in wild roles to better illustrate this dizzying allure of cinema. This includes Katherine Waterston as a stuffy stage actress who criticizes cinema to Spike Jonze as an easily aggravated German director. Chazelle also brings back composer Justin Hurwitz to compose a loud, vibrant, and unforgettable soundtrack. I can’t stop listening to the masterpiece jazz number Voodoo Mama. And, wow, the visually erratic finale to this film is so experimental and unhinged in trying to present an all-encompassing aspect of cinema’s primordial beginnings, simplistic elements, and eye-popping future.

Babylon is not exactly one of those must-watch films you recommend to everyone, but it’s my fast-paced satire overflowing with trippy odes and wild storytelling. Everything from the issues of filming with sound from the first time to sitting in a theater after realizing how the sausage is made makes for unforgettable and wondrous moments. There’s a freeing nature to it all that makes one loves movies all the more when embracing their hideous side. This is my kinda happening and it freaks me out so good.