Babylon is best when it is frenetic and messy.
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It seems hyperbolic to call any movie "polarizing." Not only because actual polarization (aka no one in the middle and everyone strongly in one camp) is so rare, but also because modern internet culture has turned every movie in a means to dissect/discuss their already formed political points whether it's critics saying that Super Mario Bros. would fail because it went woke or the folks who then said it succeeded by not being woke. All of that s***. It happens to every successful film now. What's less common is to find a big-budget release with middling reviews that some are hailing as a misunderstood classic and others are calling hot garbage. But that's precisely what Damien Chazelle's La La Land follow-up Babylon did. So much so that Chazelle himself said that he wasn't bothered by the disparate reactions and said more movies should be polarizing. That all begs the question though. Why is Babylon so polarizing? Let's dig in.
The Setup
The movie takes place in 1920s Hollywood where the movie business is booming and full of sleaze, substances, and a general sense of chaos. At the center of it all is Manuel "Manny" Torres who works as a fixer for a studio before ingratiating himself in the movie-making process. But as frenetic as the silent era of movie making is, the introduction of sound could change the business forever.
I'm going to address this movie from a bunch of different angles, starting with 1) why a lot of folks won't care for this 2) address why some folks enjoyed it so much 3) provide my own take on the film. So let's start with the hurdles this film puts on the audience.
Hurdle #1: Length
There's been a lot of serious and not-so-serious discussion asking if mainstream movies are too long. Most of the time they're citing things like the runtime for successful films like Wakanda Forever, John Wick Chapter 4 and now Oppenheimer. And my thought about long movies is about the same as my thought for short movies. If it works, it works. The only real question that should asked is if the movie feels long. And Babylon certainly does.
Part of this is because the film is trying to capture the disparate energies of the two eras (pure chaos for the silent era vs. the highly controlled sound era) and also portray a steady decline for the majority of its side characters whose baggage catches up with them or are simply left behind by the perils of showbiz.
But there's also so many bits and scenes that are too long and only seem to hammer home a point that's already been made about a thousand times throughout the films.
Hurdle #2: Another Hollywood Movie About Hollywood...That's Somehow Incomplete
Hollywood loves making movies about Hollywood. And especially wild historical eras of movie-making like the silent era and the transition from silent to sound. This is the same era captured by critical darlings like The Artist and classics like Singin' In The Rain. And honestly, portraying what that shift looked like for folks within the industry, is easily the most intriguing and interesting parts of the movie.
The two montages demonstrating one day of silent filmmaking versus one day of filming sound on a set is easily the film's best segment, both as great bits of awkward comedy and film history.
And all of that is interesting and fun for a movie nerd, even if general audiences might only enjoy it as a farce.
But once everything starts spiraling for all of the named characters the movie seems to lose what it's trying to say or that same sense of excessive fun it had maintained for so long. It's also a gigantic miss thematically to not address all of the other historical forces at work during this time period like....The Great Depression and the Hays Code and other moral and fiscal forces that pinched the actors and audiences at the same time. Otherwise it just feels like another longer less-focused version of A Star is Born blended with Day of the Locust.
Hurdle #3: Manny (As Written)
I want to make it clear that my critique of our lead character Manny has nothing to do with the actor Diego Calva (who is very good) or any other descriptors/identifiers. The problem with Manny is that he's not really written as a character. He's written an observer. We see him being drawn to movie making and Margot Robbie's aspiring starlet like a moth to the flame (perhaps a director insert character) but outside of what he likes and what he does, we don't know or see much about him that isn't him solving problems on a set or for a friend.
He's a vehicle for telling all of these little stories and never really feels like he's part of it. I suppose the idea is to make Manny as hard to decipher as Robbie and Pitt's characters, but this is a classic trope that is typically used better.
Hurdle #4: Excess
This movie opens with an elephant shitting on a guy.....now apply that logic to every debauched party that will include drugs, nudity and beyond. Again, another great opportunity to tie it into the big dreams that come from escaping a small town or to contrast it with the Depression but...nope. Still there's a lot of appealing elements too.
Appeal #1: Solid Acting Across the Board
I'll be the first to admit that Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt are playing to types they've successfully played before (Robbie's enthusiastic/fearless hotshot and Pitt's detached leading man...basically himself). But dammit if it doesn't work. Robbie is really good at coming across like a force of nature and then stomping out your heart a second later with a twinge in her voice and Pitt hits every comedic beat with perfect deadpan before he goes into his own wallow.
And that's before we dig into the supporting cast which includes an acerbic and insightful Jean Smart, Li Ju Li's terrific turn as Fay, and a bunch of stunt casted cameo roles. You can tell folks were having fun making this.
Appeal #2: Well-Directed
One of the my favorite ironies in a project like this is that it takes real skill as a writer and a director to make a movie about movie-making chaos. In particular the montage scenes where the audience is taken through multiple parts of the action at once including the opening party scene, the silent film chaos in the valley, and the introduction of the sound stage. There's half a dozen cuts in these scenes that got hearty laughs from me and that's only possible because the right shots are there.
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