Yesterday, I went to AMC theaters to watch Damien Chazelle's newest film Babylon.
While it wasn't as moving as 2014's Whiplash or 2016's La La Land, Babylon was more enjoyable than Chazelle's previous movie, the 2018 Neil Armstrong biopic First Man.
I commend Chazelle for tackling the glory days of NASA like Ron Howard did with 1995's Apollo 13 (Chazelle also co-wrote the 2016 sci-fi flick 10 Cloverfield Lane), but he was more in his element doing another film with a strong musical theme (even though this theme was mostly featured during a huge orgy scene at the beginning of Babylon), as was the case with Whiplash and La La Land.
In Babylon, the story depicts an incredibly insane (but in a good way) take on Hollywood's silent film era during the late 1920s, and how the 'talkies' (movies with sound) wrought havoc on it the following decade. We see this transition have a huge impact on the four main characters in Chazelle's comedy drama: Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo) and Manny Torres (Diego Calva).
Only two of the four characters above make it through this transition relatively unscathed.
Even though it was hugely exaggerated, the depiction of set life in Babylon made me both dread and appreciate the fact that I experience this as a background actor...which I've been working as since late 2011.
And just like with the final scene in the movie (spoilers ahead), where Manny Torres grows teary-eyed as he watches a couple of 'talkies' at a crowded theater after he visits his old job at Kinoscope Studios (which is actually Paramount Pictures...where I worked between mid-2005 to '06) from years past, I'll probably grow emotional in my hopeful old age thinking about my time in the entertainment industry should I finally leave it for greener pastures.
Babylon is Chazelle's love letter to filmmaking...with a montage showing actual movies like the first Avatar flick, The Matrix and Raiders of the Lost Ark featured at the end of the film. Babylon, with its extremely-long running time of 189 minutes, may not be as simple and impactful as La La Land, but it's still an intriguing flick by Chazelle that should be appreciated by filmgoers who have an extreme passion for cinema.
Merry Christmas!
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