by Reiko G.
Babylon was one of my most anticipated films of 2022 for many reasons. It’s got an amazing cast, with one of Margot Robbie’s best performances and Diego Calva making his Hollywood debut. Not only does the film have an incredible cast, but it has an incredible crew as well with director and writer, Damien Chazelle, well known for his films La La Land and Whiplash, at its helm. Following suit with Chazelle’s previous works, the movie brings back Justin Hurwitz to create the spectacular score. The cast and crew of this movie were full of extremely talented people, so it came as quite a shock that the reviews were so low, and it only made a little over half its budget. The reviews of the film seem quite split –viewers either hated it or adored it.
One of the main reasons this film did poorly was the marketing for it. The trailers leaned on the side of being overly vague so the audience had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Most of the trailers featured Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in the opening scene, which proved to be mildly insignificant to the overall plot of the movie. Although many elements of Babylon are over the top and extravagant, such as the opening party scene, there's more to the film than just that. The advertising didn't quite do that justice, nor did it convey the key elements of the film.
Many viewers, myself included, were excited to see another project by Damien Chazelle. However, I don’t think many were expecting Babylon to be so different from La La Land and Whiplash. Although La La Land and Whiplash seem like very different films on the surface and in genre, their overall themes are very similar. They both deal with themes of what someone consciously sacrifices to pursue a career in the entertainment arts and both end with a sense that the sacrifices were worth it because the characters achieved what they wanted. Babylon, on the other hand, does not follow this trend. Babylon is more focused on the unexpected loss accompanied by pursuing a career in Hollywood, and the toll it can take on people. It’s not so much about the journey to stardom but more about the consequences after the fact. Nellie practically becomes a movie star overnight and then faces the challenges of being an actor in Hollywood in the 1920s/30s. Mia’s character in La La Land, who struggles to find her place in Hollywood as an up-and-coming actress, is vastly different from Nellie in this way.
However, something Chazelle carries throughout all his films, Babylon included, is this love for art, specifically in film and music. La La Land and Babylon specifically feel like a love letter to L.A. Babylon obviously doesn’t have an opening number, romanticizing LA traffic like La La Land does, but it has so much adoration for the city in its own way by highlighting the birth of Hollywood. It in no way captures it as this “city of stars'' but it shows its messy beginnings, and there's something charming about that. It also portrays many elements of early Hollywood that not many movies have depicted in the past such as the destigmatization of sex and drugs before WW1 and the inclusion of Mexican Americans in the foundations of Hollywood.
The more I thought about this film, the more I fell in love with it. I don’t think it’s something you can quite appreciate right away because it isn't very straightforward. It’s a film that stays with you for a while and will keep provoking questions long after watching it. One of the most important themes of the movie was the contradiction between the mortality of humans and the immortality of films. It really emphasized the downfall of movie stars and how quickly one can go from being at the top to being a forgotten thing of the past. That’s not really something I grasped from it on my first watch, and I think the movie is worth more than one watch. This is another reason viewers may have walked away from the movie not enjoying it because it’s hard to enjoy something that didn’t make sense. I hope as time goes on, more people will come to appreciate its brilliance, and really take the time to understand its themes.
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