Babylon: Towering Masterpiece or Redundant Hit Piece
The Tower of Babel is one of the most recognized tales from this little-known book titled the Bible; this tale tells the story of ambitious men and women setting out to build a tower that could reach the heights of God. As a result of this ambition, God cast divine punishment upon these humans by dividing them through the creation of different languages, making it impossible for the builders of this tower to communicate effectively with each other. It is a theological tale condemning ambition and rebellion, which makes it an interesting source of a title for Damien Chazelle’s latest feature film, the ambitious and rebellious historical epic Babylon.
Director and screenwriter Damien Chazelle proved himself as an up-and-coming name in the film industry in 2014 with Whiplash, a feature-length music-centric thriller based on a short film he had penned and directed a year earlier. Chazelle would go on to solidify his stay two years later with his critically acclaimed and Oscar-sweeping tour de force La La Land. A near decade after Chazelle’s initial Whiplash short film comes his most ambitious project yet in the form of his big-budget, star-studded three-hour-long feature Babylon. While Whiplash had a single lead and La La Land had two leads, Babylon boldly jumps throughout the film between three leads and two secondary characters. The film depicts the transition from silent films to talkies in late 1920s Hollywood through these multiple perspectives, which allows for a rise or fall of one character in this industrial shift to be juxtaposed with another’s rise or fall.
Capturing this shift is another ambitious endeavor for this film to embark on even more since Chazelle attempts to balance historical realism to the era being depicted with an explosive and comedic presentation. The central character of Manny Torres makes for a compelling central anchor for the madness as the audience starts the film with him and are exposed to the other characters and events through him before switching perspectives; whether you feel the film is able to juggle all of these characters effectively is up to debate, but Diego Calva’s Manny and Margot Robbie’s Nellie serve as the films strongest individual characters, and joint pairing as their relationship is one of the most compelling aspects of the web of connections in Babylon.
Manny and Nellie start the film as outsiders to the film industry, with the Mexican immigrant Manny working as a servant for a studio executive and the New Jersey-raised Nellie crashing an industry party uninvited. Through the lens of these two characters and their respective rises, Babylon is a story championing rebellious outsiders, but as the events of the film unfold, it becomes clear that Hollywood is not as kind towards outsiders or other disenfranchised groups as they would like to appear. In recent years, there has been a trend of ‘love letters’ to Hollywood in numerous works, from Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, Babylon has been dubbed by many publications and reviews as something closer to a suicide note to the industry. This perspective is understandable as Babylon depicts morally reprehensible actions done by players in the industry, and the feature places significant attention towards how the industry can destroy one’s identity through Manny’s progression. Despite all of the depravity and elephant feces this film flings at its viewer, there is a tangible love for film as a medium at the film’s core that can be strongly felt.
Much like the Tower of Babel itself, Babylon is ambitious and rebellious throughout the story, Chazelle is attempting to tell with it, and the end result, through no fault of divine punishment, is very divisive. Some will argue Babylon succeeded in telling a complex historical epic that highlighted the faults of the industry through multiple perspectives, while others will argue it was a lackluster over-stuffed, an incessantly crude attempt at making another Oscar-bait movie about movies. If you would like to add to the tower of discourse surrounding this film, check it out at the SLC on March 24th at 7:30 PM or March 25th at 6:00 PM and 10:00 PM!
Writer: Luis Garcia
Artist: Solymar Estrella
