It’s safe to say that there’s no other film quite like Babylon. An elephant shitting all over a truck hand delivering it to a debauched bacchanal in the middle of the desert; a woman urinating on an overweight man for sexual pleasure; a person with dwarfism handling an ejaculating, fake oversized cock; cocaine furled orgies and continuous loud, frenetic music are just a handful of highlights from the film’s opening reel – a full, thirty minute sequence that occurs before the feature’s title. Damien Chazelle’s latest is an unrelenting dynamo of a movie, a love-letter to the Hollywood over nearly 100 years ago; the final moments of the silent film period as it hurtles towards the era of the talkies.
The story spans several years, but begins in 1926 where we’re introduced to a world where there seems to be no rules. We have Brad Pitt’s tinseltown golden boy, Jack Conrad, the reigning king of the silent movie who looks like he’s just had his latest wife leave him. There’s also Manuel “Manny” Torres (Diego Calva), a Mexican immigrant tasked with getting the elephant to the party in the opening moments, but a keen, very ambitious man who dreams of becoming more than he is. There’s also Nellie LaRoy (Robbie), a self-declared star who literally crashes the party, her sights firmly set of making the big time as the next big thing it town. The film largely charts the trio’s journey over the following days, weeks, months and years, through a changing industry where anything seems to go, the opportunities seemingly limitless.
It’s clear that Chazelle very much draws from the strengths of his previous movies. There are nods to his superb debut Whiplash, throughout, and the constant presence of music – handled by Justin Hurwitz – screams (very loud) the glorious crowd-pleaser La La Land, but be warned, this is a very different movie. A strong opening hour shows the film’s glowing ambition, and although the pace can’t be kept for the film’s hefty three-hour-plus running time, there so much to feast upon that one viewing simply isn’t enough. Pitt is superb, and Calva makes a striking turn in a breakout role as Manny, but this is Robbie’s film, and her portrayal of LaRoy is pure dynamite.
Littered with extended cameos from some very famous faces (Spike Jonze as screaming German director Otto Von Strassberger is very much a stand-out), and some magnificent camerawork, costume and production design, along with some frantic editing from Tom Cross, who has edited every one of Chazelle’s films to date, Babylon is a rewarding, if exhausting cinematic romp that despite its spectacle, might just suit the home formats so you can pause for thought, and to catch your breath, every once in a while.
Bonus features include deleted and extended scenes, as well as three main ‘making of’ featurettes – ‘A Panoramic Canvas Called Babylon’ about the inspiration and origins of the film, ‘The Costumes of Babylon’ which, obviously, focusses on the costume design of the film, and the challenges that went into creating over 7,000 costumes for the film, and finally ‘Scoring Babylon’ which looks at Justin Hurwitz’s musical process. The latter two featurettes are under four minutes total, but the main ‘panoramic canvas’ is well worth a look, running at around 30 minutes. All are presented on the second disc and are in HD only. In all, pretty decent, specifically for that first feature, but lacking in other areas and we would have loved to have had a commentary from Chazelle himself.
Babylon is available on Digital 21st March, 2023 and on 4K Ultra HD™ + Blu-ray™ SteelBook®, 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™, DVD, from the 3rdApril from Paramount Home Entertainment.
Babylon (4K Ultra-HD)
Summary
A film that will indeed polarise audiences, but we very much fell into the positive camp and found Chazelle’s latest to be an absolute frantic, frenetic dynamo of a film which saw us, despite it’s butt-numbing runtime, enjoying every debauched minute of it.
