Review: ‘Babylon’
Led by a charming Diego Calva and an electrifying Margot Robbie, Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is a wild, glorious and mesmerizing cinematic experience that needs to be seen to be believed.
If Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, a stunning, genuinely moving musical that was extremely well-received by both critics and audiences alike, was a love letter to the city of Los Angeles and more specifically Hollywood, his latest film, Babylon, is the complete antithesis; the anti-La La Land, if you will. A love letter to films themselves, perhaps, but a scathing takedown of every other aspect of the industry, from the suits who hate the medium yet still control almost every part of it to the star-making machine that chews up bright, young stars and spits them out at convenience to the cruel, inhumane practices employed by pompous directors who take endless advantage of people in pursuit of their own ambitions.
Babylon follows Manny (Diego Calva), a bright-eyed Mexican man who comes to Los Angeles in pursuit of the Hollywood dream. Working as a lowly assistant at the Hollywood mansion of a big-time industry executive, doing everything from waiting on the endless abundance of visitors to delivering elephants to the house for parties, Manny comes across Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), an aspiring actress who is hoping to make it big in the industry. What follows is a series of segments, stretched across 15 years of their lives, that charts the rise and inevitable fall of both Manny and Nellie’s hopes and dreams of becoming a part of something bigger.
Calva, who made his film debut in the haunting, searing I Promise You Anarchy in 2015, is charming and charismatic as the initially naïve and sincere Manny. As he starts climbing both the social and professional ladder, Manny finds himself becoming another agent of the Hollywood regime, following the traditional playbook and upholding the same constrictive system he once sought to break. It is quite the character arc and emotional journey that Manny undergoes in the film, but thankfully, Calva proves he is more than capable of stepping up to the challenge, delivering a soulful, visceral performance of a man realizing he may be in over his head. As Manny’s wide-eyed view of the industry slowly starts to fade and wither as he becomes more and more ingrained in his surroundings, so do the glimmer and shine in his eyes, a transformation that Calva manages to capture perfectly, resulting in one of the best, most exciting performances of the year.
Robbie has no shortage of soon-to-be iconic roles under her belt, including her star-making turn in The Wolf of Wall Street, as well as her performances as Tonya Harding and Harley Quinn, the latter of which has become a Halloween staple, and Nellie is no exception. Larger than life and burning incredibly bright (amd fast), she is absolutely electrifying as the dynamic Nellie, whose meteoric rise to stardom is interrupted by the introduction of sound in film, which had been purely silent before. Bold, brash and foul-mouthed, Nellie refuses to mold herself to fit Hollywood’s ever-changing ideals and expectations, a decision that costs her her career and maybe even more, and Robbie captures her drive, impetuosity and eventual desperation to a T. It is a performance for the ages, one that will surely place her firmly in the awards conversation.
Jovan Adepo is phenomenal as background trumpet player Sidney Palmer, who slowly rises through the ranks of Hollywood to become a star himself. Although criminally underused through the film’s 3-hour runtime, his arc is perhaps the most devastating, as he is forced to retire at the height of his career in order to preserve his own humanity and integrity. Li Jun Li, meanwhile, is absolutely magnetic as actress and performer Lady Fay Zhu, inspired by the legendary Anna May Wong, lighting up the screen whenever she appears. Elsewhere, Olivia Wilde almost steals the show with her uproariously funny delivery as the scorned wife of a Hollywood leading man, while Samara Weaving is a riot as a popular actress whose career is threatened by the arrival of Nellie.
Chazelle directs Babylon like a finely-tuned symphony, a lively cacophony of sights and sounds, some delightful, others grotesque. He throws everything, including the kitchen sink, at viewers, launching a full-blown attack on the senses and the sensibilities that will leave audiences dazed, confused and amazed in equal amounts at what they just experienced. A third-act detour that involves Tobey Maguire’s mob boss James McKay taking Manny on a tour of the Los Angeles underworld, which Chazelle cleverly portrays as the nine circles of hell, is particularly well-directed, also proves that the director has the chops to helm a horror film if he ever so pleases.
While Babylon is at once funny and scary, charming and tragic, beautiful and ugly, it is above all else an angry, volcanic movie, simmering and practically bursting at the seams with rage against the Hollywood machine that builds people up just to tear them down. However, it also recognizes how much of an impact films can have on people; films make us laugh and cry, sometimes simultaneously. They can scare and haunt us, staying with us far after the credits roll. But they can also make us hope and dream, reaching for the stars in search of better lives. Babylon ends with a stunning celebration of films that also acts as a tribute to the communal experience of watching movies in theaters, and to the audience members themselves. The audience members take the time out of their days and spend their hard-earned money to watch a series of moving images with complete strangers in a cold, dark room just for a chance to escape, even if momentarily.
The truth is, Babylon won’t be for everyone; it is purposely loud and brash, intentionally abrasive and ugly, and sometimes dense and difficult to swallow. But it’s also beautiful and hopeful, tragic and poetic, haunting and mesmerizing, so much so that you won’t be able to look away. With larger-than-life performances and extravagant set-pieces that need to be seen to be believed, Babylon is also the perfect encapsulation of why we go to the movies; in order to escape.
Rating: 4.5/5
Babylon debuts in theaters in the UK on January 20, 2023. It hits theaters in the US on December 23, 2022.