Movie Details
Babylon(2023)
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast-Margot Robbie: Plays Nellie LaRoy, a rising actress in the 1920s
Brad Pitt: Plays Jack Conrad, an “über-movie star” who parties hard
Diego Calva: Plays Manny Torres, a rising film producer
Samara Weaving: An actress who is often confused with Robbie because of their similar features
Max Minghella: An actor who has won awards for his work in The Handmaid’s Tale and The Social Network
Olivia Wilde: A cast member
Eric Roberts: A cast member
Tobey Maguire: A cast member
Jovan Adepo: A cast member
Li Jun Li: A cast member
Katherine Waterston: A cast member
Movie type- Comedy/Drama
Release date- 23 December 2022
IMDB Rating-7.1
Languages- English and Spanish..
Duration-3 Hour 09 Minutes
Trailer
Synopsis
Damien Chazelle. Thirty-eight years, one Oscar and four feature films, two of which are already considered classics today and the third almost too. And the fourth was a black and white debut, so it almost doesn’t count. That’s quite a tally for someone younger than most MovieZone editors. In this case, however, it is not envy in the least, but rather respect. When talking about the most interesting creators of the 30-something generation, Chazelle’s name usually comes up first, and rightly so. And the commercial failure of his new release Babylon probably won’t change that. She didn’t make any money, and she didn’t get a completely enthusiastic reception overseas, but that’s just the way things are in life. And that sometimes happens to the best movies. And the chance that Babylon will be one of the best at least this year is not small at all.
Babylon takes place in Hollywood in the 1920s, when the silent film era was slowly coming to an end and sound was coming. Superstar Jack Conrad (Pitt to be exact) slowly discovers that there may be no place for him in the new world, ambitious Nellie (sexy and wild Robbie), who came here from a God-fearing shack, is determined to become a new acting icon, Mexican Manny just wants shoot and the black musician Sidney, the exotic Lady Fay Zhu or the aging journalist and critic Elinor St. will also dream their Hollywood dreams. John. But dreams are very dangerous in the turbulent world of the silver screen, new technologies, fleeting fame and hypocrisy.
Babylon: PHOTO GALLERY
Babylon is to a large extent reminiscent of Chazelle’s previous pieces, because they also told about the fulfillment of dreams and desires and what a person is willing to sacrifice for them. Drummer Miles Teller was bullied by JK Simmons in Whiplash, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling risked their relationship to succeed in La La Land, and The First Man was about what Neil Armstrong had to pay to walk the Months. It would be easy, but at the same time short-sighted, to look at Babylon as a story of a Hollywood era, as conceived for example by The Artist. Of course, to some extent, Chazelle is trying to revive nearly a century old Hollywood and its stars (in this case fictional, but partly inspired by real ones) who are obsessed with the film. But just like in his older works, he lets the heroes suffer because of the fulfillment of their dreams. Physically, morally, psychologically,
Babylon is about people who make movies. About the people you can’t see because they’re somewhere in the background trying to get the camera before the sun goes down and the shot is ruined. About those who hope that an agent capable of turning them into new stars is waiting for them somewhere around the corner. Or about those who have already become stars, but suffer from the fact that everyone around them must have some opinion about them, or who realize that their career is ending. People about whom today – after a hundred years – nobody knows anything, their names are known only to connoisseurs, and they had to sacrifice many times more to their dream than they were willing to at first. But they all made films together and when everything fit together correctly, they created a miracle. Chazelle did not make a tribute to Hollywood, but rather a tribute to the dreamers without whom Hollywood would not exist. And he shot it in a way you might not be ready for.
Right from the start, Babylon makes it clear where the boundaries are that it is willing to go beyond. And they’re far as hell. So far that I wouldn’t be surprised if the more hearty viewers went home because Chazelle treated the opening as one huge party. Or otherwise. Before he even arrives at the party, an elephant is made of a man. Just so you know what you’re getting into right from the start. The following Hollywood party is something absolutely insane. It’s like if Baz Luhrmann shot the clips from The Wolf of Wall Street, he was high on coke and he was tricked into putting “really everything” in there. Nudity and drugs? Sure, but we’re just at the beginning… I won’t be specific, just… well, you probably haven’t seen this yet.
Moreover, Chazelle does not shoot Hollywood orgies to shock or cheaply entertain. A gigantic party with hundreds of people gives him the opportunity to fool around with the camera, driving through the crowd. She hovers around the individual heroes during their dialogues and then runs away again to show more tidbits from a party full of costumes, sex, drugs, and jazz (rock and roll wasn’t played back then). And it takes maybe half an hour, during which we get to know all the main characters, who are clearly profiled here and you immediately know who you should keep your fingers crossed for and why, what they can do and whether they are a professional, a naive person or someone who sooner or later a cruel fate awaits. And all this to a perfect soundtrack by Justin Hurwitz.
A thirty-minute opulent party will then indicate what the whole of Babylon will look like in the end. It takes place over the space of several years and the heroes often meet only for a moment in it, everyone has their own story, but Chazelle tells them in such a way that he is not afraid to devote twenty minutes to one single day on the set, a party in better company, the first shooting with sound or a trip to a mad gangster where he plays a more twisted chord. And he suggests that the horror genre could be very interesting in his presentation. The big Hollywood story here is made up of individual episodes, in which the director shows that shooting one small scene in a studio can be audiovisually just as captivating as directing hundreds of extras in a historical blockbuster. He is able to evoke emotions in them, sometimes he plays the comic chord, other times he is able to move, show his heroes as a bunch of fools, admirable stars and despairing ones rushing into the abyss. And it creates a comprehensive picture of the people who made Hollywood, and there’s no reason to think it looks any fundamentally different today.
However, this puzzle of small stories somewhat hinders the efforts to make the relationships between the characters work. The heroes meet rather exceptionally, and in the end, the love between the uncontrollable star Nellie and Manny, who, unlike her, wants to be in the film, but rather behind the camera and behind the scenes, gets the most space. Chazelle says that there is something between them right from their first meeting, but thanks to the episodic nature of Babylon, there is unfortunately not much space for their relationship to develop in any traditional way. And even if it fits together towards the end, the narrative form is simply not suitable for a big romance in an even bigger Hollywood. But the director was obviously aware of this, and it’s certainly not to say that the love line didn’t work or even interfered. It’s just that the way it builds to its climax doesn’t work here for logical reasons the way it would in a regular movie.
However, you probably understood that Babylon is not an ordinary movie. It’s a combination of circus acts, slightly bizarre characters and episodes from the lives of dreamers and fools who wanted to tell stories, wanted applause and Hollywood got under their skin so much that they didn’t even have time to notice that as fast as they were, stars were being made, so they go out. And that dreams can turn into nightmares. But that it’s worth the hell to be a part of it and maybe achieve immortality.
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