Movie Details
| Title: | Babylon | |
| Director: | Damien Chazelle | |
| Year: | 2022 | |
| Genre: | Movie About Movies | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 04.01.23 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (2)
- La La Land
- Whiplash
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 04.01.23 | Internet | Oh boy, what to say about this one. This is a... kind of epic maybe, about the excess of 1920s Hollywood, or rather about the introduction of sound in movies, or rather about how Hollywood will corrupt and ruin everything, or rather about the magic of movies. Somewhere in there are like three and a half protagonists and a bunch of money on the screen and a clip of Avatar at the end. This should be a movie right up my alley, but I think it's because it went into such niche territory that I wound up having more problems with it compared to if it were more generic or whatever. I suppose a stronger reaction is better regardless of whether it's positive or negative, but I definitely had a negative reaction to this movie. I think my major problem with it is tone. I am not sure what Damien Chazelle is trying to say with it. At times it feels like an indictment, at others a celebration. Sometimes it's fantasy, others realism. The characters feel like excuses to say these speeches that feel straight from Chazelle himself. The plot is clunky and meandering. But most of all, the movie feels like a modern-day example of the thing it seems to be criticizing. Backing up a bit, I liked Whiplash, didn't love La La Land, and didn't see First Man. I like Chazelle's love of the drum and music in general but here I felt like it was anachronistic not to make a statement but just because this is the music that Chazelle likes. I liked the music but now way was Leo P's Too Many Zooz baritone sax style in vogue at that time. And if it's not supposed to be real, then why base the story on real people and real-life events? Why play goddamn Singin in the Rain (a movie that tells the same story more or less but much much better) at the end? It's all very confusing. For as raucous and chaotic a vibe that he's going for, comparing it to a similar movie like Moulin Rouge's opening makes this look glossy and expensive and cold. Josh Olsen on the Trailers from Hell podcast said something that I very much agree with, which is that these Gen Z directors are weird about sex. This movie shows almost pornographic levels of debauchery, but it's almost like wallpaper because the camera doesn't know what to do with it. In more assured hands, it can be erotic (like a Jess Franco film) or dirty (think David Lynch's Fire Walk with Me) or bizarre (Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut), but here it's actively uninteresting. I've gotten a similar vibe from other movies coming out of this crop of directors, like the It Follows guy's Under the Silver Lake. There are plenty of tits but no sensuality. And you know, it'd be fine if that were the point, but I suspect we're meant to be overwhelmed and whisked away by this excess since a couple of the main characters are, but I was definitely not. I was watching one very pregnant lady trying her hardest to act like she was dancing with wild abandon and thinking "that looks uncomfortable." Joe Dante called the film grotesque. I suspect his feelings stem more from the unfair characterization of Hollywood in general (like having multiple people die per day on set), but the vibe is there on multiple levels. Anyway, let's talk about what I liked. I liked some of the sweeping location photography stuff, with the musicians on set for the silents and the different sets right next to each other and them inventing the story in the dialogue cards. Basically everything that Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon tried to cover except he stuck much closer to stories he heard first-hand from the early directors and his movie suffered for other reasons. Really this movie is like Nickelodeon meets The Bad & The Beautiful with the setting taken from one and the plot from the other. Oh right, stuff I liked. I did like the music. It's much too modern but I liked Leo P's inclusion and how rambunctious it is. I do feel like Chazelle likes drums and you feel it in both the music and his editing. It was fun to see who played the German director and the studio exec and I thought Brad Pitt's part was going to be more like Clooney in Hail, Caesar! but it was a real leading role which is nice since he's one of the few remaining movie stars that we got. I think they should've, like, explained more about how his story develops. If you read the imdb trivia about John Gilbert, his story is much more interesting than what happens in the film. Pretty much everything else I had one problem or another with. It doesn't help that the biggest head-scratcher was right at the end with this AFI top 100 type montage epiphany from the guy who worked on them for like 5 years. I guess that one coked-up conversation really stuck with him. That really bothered me because the rest of the movie really seems very anti-hollywood. I guess the theme is that movies are great despite the people who make them? Hollywood will turn you into a monster but it's worth it for the movies that get made? Meh. |
