Babylon: The BRWC Review

16th December 2022

Babylon: The BRWC Review. By Shani Harris.

La La Land helmer Damien Chazelle was hailed as the wunderkind of Hollywood when his beloved musical became a blockbuster. He also made history as the youngest director to sweep the major categories at the Academy Awards to take home six Oscars including the trophy for Best Director at the tender age of 32. His crowd pleaser was a love letter to Hollywood about an aspiring actress named Mia (Emma Stone) who falls in love with jazz musician Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) while both of them are pursuing their big dreams. Chazelle infuses the film with a childlike optimism about the world including Busby Berkeley inspired musical dance sequences paired with the possibility that fame and fortune can easily happen.

Chazelle first made a splash in the industry with his indie movie Whiplash about a brash music instructor played by J.K. Simmons. Simmons earned an Academy Award nomination for his role as a foul mouthed professor, but it was the success of La La Land that catapulted Chazelle into the mainstream.

Babylon explores some of the same themes of La La Land. But the director has ripped off the glossy veneer and pulls the audience into the seedy under belly of the business.

“This movie is a hate letter to Hollywood on some level. But a love letter to movies, cinema and to the art form itself.” Chazelle explained in an interview. “You kind of have to have both polls mutually in evidence. That was the guiding principle for this movie. Almost in every frame if not every scene. It was going to be the highest of the highs paired with the lowest of the lows. The most beautiful people with the ugliest behavior. The most beautiful extravagant settings paired with he grimiest, grittiest dirt under the fingernails sweat, blood and tears viscerality. It was important for me to capture the full gamut. The full meal that I think Hollywood especially in this time was when there weren’t really the rules and regulations we have today. There was this kind of Wild West unhinged freedom to it that led to alot of great art and also led to alot of wrecked lives and ruined people. Trying to kind of grasp both in one film was the key.”

Babylon is set in the silent film era during the roaring 1920’s. Margot Robbie portrays aspiring actress Nellie LaRoy who will do anything to achieve fame on the silver screen. She meets Manny Torres (Diego Calva) who has traveled from Mexico and performs menial tasks including handling an elephant as he tries to break through in the biz. The movie is not for the faint of heart and has a non-stop graphic depiction of debauchery. The opening scenes have us taken through a raging orgiastic sex party with topless women, golden showers, giant phallic shaped toys, a drugged out chicken and tons of cocaine. Brad Pitt’s movie star Jack Conrad is also at the bash after breaking up with his wife as he partakes in the coke fueled excess around him. He is the biggest matinee idol of the era who is a composite of Clark Gable and Douglas Fairbanks.

Nellie LaRoy gets her big break after she wins a role once it is discovered that an actress at the party has suffered an accidental overdose. Her scene on set seals the deal for her to be a silent era starlet once she shows her skills to act and improvise her way through different scenarios while crying on cue. Manny is our guide as we navigate through this unhinged world. Diego Calva’s acting skills are limited to mainly a bunch of open mouthed reaction shots. He stumbles around in each frame like an extra from Triangle of Sadness, while professing his love and desire to Nelly who ignores his advances. This literally shows her lack of interest in Manny because she will pretty much hook up with anything that moves and even has a bit too much fun mounting an inanimate ice sculpture in the midst of celebrating her burgeoning success.

Nellie becomes a massive sex symbol at the height of her stardom on par with Clara Bow. There are many easter eggs buried in the film with a few tributes to Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. Jack Conrad does a bit of foreshadowing about the moralistic depravity of tinseltown as he floats face down on the surface of his swimming pool like Joe Gillis after he was killed by Norma Desmond. Director Spike Jonze also invokes the classic with his Erich von Stronheim like cameo as a sunlight obsessed German filmmaker who is trying to capture magic hour. Jean Smart plays Elinor St. John inspired by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper who gives juicy commentary. Jack Conrad tells Elinor. “When I first moved to LA. Do you know what all the signs on all the doors read? No actors or dogs allowed. I changed that.” This confession actually has a kernel of truth about the era. But the fact is signs really did exist around the country that banned Black people, Jewish people, Mexican people and other people of color from entering establishments and locations. It was off putting that this line was used in jest as a way to create sympathy for a character while not acknowledging the real origin of this type of discrimination.

The shock and awe ride on the bumpy rollercoaster of this narrative seems inspired by The Wolf of Wall Street, La Dolce Vita and The Great Gatsby. The Wolf of Wall Street had Leonardo DiCaprio skillfully acting his way through crass over the top scenes under the direction of Martin Scorsese that still managed to sometimes put a mirror up to the hilarity of what is unfolding. Babylon had a massive 80 million dollar production with a three hour running time, but it only manages to make us feel like we are trapped in a Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah remake without a skeleton key to escape.

The most problematic storylines involve secondary roles portrayed by people of color that are underdeveloped and one dimensional. Lady Fa Zhu ( Li Jun Li) based on Anna May Wong is introduced performing a remixed re-enactment of Marlene Dietrich’s famous role in Morocco. A tuxedo clad Lady Fa sings an original song called My Girl’s Pussy by Justin Hurwitz to a crowd of onlookers before planting a kiss on Kaia Gerber. She is shown achieving success during the era and even collaborating on the writing process. The fact is that Anna May Wong had bigger obstacles to overcome according to Paramount executive A.C. Lyles in Anna May Wong in Her Own Words. “I think the best word for Anna May Wong is she earned her position. She earned it the hard way. That’s why she survived as long as she did. She came into a community that wasn’t striving. Let’s find a Chinese lady and make her a star. Anna May Wong created a desire for Paramount to have a Chinese leading lady. She did it herself. She wanted to eclipse that image of just being the Chinese, the Asian, the exotic female lady. She wanted to become an actress where her ethnicity had nothing to do with it.

When it came to playing roles that were written for white females. She could not be considered. It’s very hard for Hollywood audiences to relate to someone who they know is not going to get the guy. She can not have the kind of love interest that ultimately would give her stardom.”

Another issue with Babylon is that the Manny Torres character is utilized to perpetuate racial and colorist plot points. Once news spreads that talkies will be the biggest thing to change the film industry Manny sneaks into a packed movie theater to watch The Jazz Singer in 1927. Al Jolsen performs in the role wearing blackface as he prefers to sing Mammy, Sonny Boy and other popular jazz music instead of his family’s traditional Jewish prayers. Babylon does not include any clips of Jolsen singing with his face covered in black paint which is an insulting form of minstrel mockery used to ridicule Black people. But there is an earlier scene that is quickly flashed on a massive set during the silent era where two white background actors are covered in head to toe full body blackface paint dressed as tribal Africans who are wrestling.

The sound era brings many problems for Nellie LaRoy and Jack Conrad. There are scenarios where Nellie fumbles lines with her New Jersey accent, can’t hit her mark and has issues with microphone placement. The Artist and Singing in the Rain dealt with similar dilemmas on screen. Manny finds a way to turn Black jazz trumpet player Sidney Palmer ( Jovan Adepo ) into a movie star once sound is a vital component of entertainment. One day at the height of Sidney’s fame he is filming on set with a high beam spotlight pointed at his face. Manny is called in to help fix an issue. He is told by someone connected with the production that they want to show the film in the South but it is hard to tell Sidney is Black because of the white light hitting his face. Manny tells Sidney to rub blackface cork on his skin to resolve the issue. Sidney complies and performs as a Black man in blackface which was troubling to witness. The derogatory minstrel show trope was perpetuated as a plot twist by a Black artist but the historic footage of a white artist who used the practice to achieve fame was not included.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s friends Lukas Haas (George Munn) and Tobey Maguire ( James McKay) have small roles in the movie. But they fall flat like Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt and the rest of the ensemble who strike one note while over acting in the film. Margot Robbie getting bitten by a snake and being resurrected like Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction with a girl on girl make out scene couldn’t even save this flick.

It was baffling that archival footage was added at the tail end of the movie to try and forge a narrative connection to the classic cinematic works of Singing in the Rain and Avatar. Babylon is a messy montage full of elephant feces and projectile vomiting that wants to be a cinematic masterpiece, but fails to project a cohesive vision about the cautionary pitfalls of showbiz.

Grade: D

Babylon opens in theaters on Dec. 23^rd.

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