Babylon, impressive as it is technically throughout, jumps the shark numerous times before trying to tie all of it back into an "aren't movies grand?" ending which ends up feeling far more manipulative than genuine. Babylon is both entirely cynical and tear-jerkingly sincere at the same time but as it approached it's ending I was tired of Babylon, feeling like it was just recycling ideas from other films about how we are supposed to feel about what we are watching instead of evoking what we really might feel.
The film starts out all Baz Luhrmann-y with an incredibly shot, sepia-toned circus of excess and hedonism which subtly (and not so subtly) wags its finger at its subject, and us for being drawn to it. We meet the hot mess that Robbie is playing and we see how the main character (since this seems to be confusing for some) that Calva is playing falls for her head over heals. Not because the movie actually gets us to fall for her but because the movie signals us to fall for her. Her character is never more than a damaged object for us to love because she's beautiful and broken and we know this because she tells us right out that she cries on screen by "thinking of home." Oh sweet child...
The protracted scene is incredibly structured to bring out the exact predictable response in its audience and plays out in excess, like most of the over three hour film, to make sure we get it all. And from there we follow Calva as he rises and falls along with the dying silent era of Hollywood, in love with the woman who is bad news and risking it all for her, only to have that blow up in his face and lose it all, before stumbling across a cinema to once again find the magic of movies. But baked into this story is the madonna/whore narrative of women and their roles in our lives that just never felt good. Babylon wants to be a "how the sausage is made" story that gets us to still love the sausage, but it keeps going so far down its own rabbit holes that it loses the possibility of love, only to tack it on at the end without earning it. As he confesses his love for Robbie's character at the end I never bought it. I never could see what he loved in her, not without the sort of man-takes-care-of-woman-cave-man schtick that feels gross. And this relationship is the metaphor for loving movies that, once again, the film never earns. And the film never quite gets us to celebrate why we love movies either. So its final moments in a cinema shoving the love of movies down our throats fell flat for me.
But there is so much technically good about Babylon. Chazelle films his story in a way that is hard to look away, every frame feeling like a show piece for a gallery. And Calva is so cinematically beautiful his presence is just so riveting. The rest of the cast are all experts and deliver great moments, especially the quieter ones like when Smart explains to Pitt why it's over. And the music! Oh the music... Hurwitz' score (despite him stealing from his own La La Land score somewhat) is incredibly infectious. His Voodoo Mama will stick with you even after the credits roll but the entirety of the score both evokes the time period and transcends it to shake even today's audience.
But so much of the film left me cold, so much so that by the time Calva's character was being dragged underground into what can only be spectacle for shock value sake, I was already done. I didn't believe the love story and I had lost faith with the character arcs. Pitt's final moment felt unbelievable and sudden, despite the film foreshadowing it all the way through from the first few scenes. The women characters only get to die off camera but that made sense in a film where women were all pretty much just objects for the men to build their arcs around.
Babylon isn't a great film but it is built and filmed like a great film. It is acted and scored like a great film. But it has so little original to say and just so much manipulation, the more I think about it the less it does for me. It's not that I hated it. I've just seen it all before because I've been to the movies, because I've actually fallen in love, been wowed with wonder, and found revelation in the movies. I don't need this to tell me to do it.
Babylon
Starring: Diego Calva, Margo Robbie, Brad Pitt, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, Toby Maguire, Lukas Haas, Max Minghella, Samara Weaving, Katherine Waterston, Olivia Wilde, Spike Jonze, Flea, Jeff Garlin, Rory Scovel, Eric Roberts
Writer/Director: Damien Chazelle
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