Babylon: A Review - Damien Chazelle's Reach Exceeds His Grasp in Bloated Babylon

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. A messy misfire of a movie that is not worth seeing in the theater but if you’re interested check it out when it hits streaming.

“BABYLON WILL BE LIKE SODOM AND GOMORRAH WHEN GOD OVERTHREW THEM. IT WILL NEVER BE INHABITED OR LIVED IN FOR GENERATIONS.” ISAIAH 13:19

I readily admit that I am a fan of director Damien Chazelle.

Chazelle’s first feature, Whiplash, which I recently re-watched, was a powerful announcement of the director’s arrival. La La Land, Chazelle’s second film, was an Oscar-winning blockbuster but also a subtle yet masterful movie that was considerably deeper than many understood. Chazelle’s third feature, the over-looked and undervalued First Man, was a brilliant and profound piece of cinema.

Now the Oscar-winning writer/director Chazelle is back with his newest film, the highly anticipated Babylon, starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.

With my Chazelle fandom as context, I’m sorry to have to report that Babylon, a three-hour and nine-minute, sprawling extravaganza, simply doesn’t work. It isn’t awful, but it isn’t good either.

Babylon chronicles a bevy of characters in the decadent and debauched old Hollywood of the late 1920’s as they navigate the industry’s transition from silent movies to talkies.

Even that description of the plot gives away the game as the film’s narrative is decidedly derivative. Other current filmmakers have made much better films on similar topics, be it P.T. Anderson’s Boogie Nights – which dramatized the porn industry’s drug-fueled move from film to digital, or even Quinten Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – which was about Hollywood’s transition from the studio system to the new Hollywood of the 1970’s.

Chazelle makes multiple references to both Boogie Nights and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, so much so that it seems to be an homage to those movies (it’s also an homage to Singing in the Rain and its coda seems to pay tribute to Kubrick’s 2001), but that doesn’t make his story any more original or compelling.

For example, just the casting of Pitt and Robbie – who both stared in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, has an air of homage to it. But when Robbie’s character sits in a movie theater and unleashes a million-watt smile when she hears the audience respond to her performance on-screen – which is an almost identical scene from when she played Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it feels less like homage and more like imitation.

GRIME AND GRIT UNDER THE GLITZ AND GLAMOUR

The first thirty minutes of Babylon are an extended, pre-title card sequence that revolves around a massive party at a Hollywood producer’s home in very rural Bel Air.

This party is meant to highlight the debauchery of both the roaring twenties and Hollywood at its height, but Chazelle, unlike say P.T. Anderson, is incapable of adequately portraying the grime and grit under the glitz and glamour.

The party, which features a bevy of bodily fluids – including a woman pissing on a guy to satiate his perversion and a midget with a fake giant cock ejaculating on a crowd (not to mention the pre-party close-up of an elephant’s asshole which then shits profusely on some poor bastard), and a cavalcade of cocaine use, as well as an ample supply of nudity, feels incongruously sterile.

Chazelle’s use of bodily fluids in the film (later on there’s a tsunami of vomit too) are cheap substitutes for realism, most notably the blood and guts of emotional realism, in a story that is never able to fully form truly human, multi-dimensional characters.

The debauched party scene is so cold, controlled and antiseptic that it comes across as a virginal, pre-pubescent boy’s naïve beliefs about what sex and drugs are like. Chazelle is that virginal, pre-pubescent boy.

Once the party ends and the title card presents itself, the story finally begins. The main characters are Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), the biggest silent movie star of the moment, Nellie LaRoy, a Clara Bow-esque “it” girl who gets her big break and makes the most of it, and Manny Torres (Diego Calves), a Mexican film assistant who loves movies and works his way up the Hollywood ladder by dealing with incorrigibles like Conrad and LaRoy.

There are two other semi-lead characters, jazz trumpeter Sydney Palmer (Jovan Adepo) and cabaret singer/actress Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li). Neither Sydney nor Lady Fay are fleshed out to any satisfactory degree, and their presence in the film feels more like a rather ham-handed attempt to appease the diversity gods rather than to advance the story. It is no fault of the actors, but one can’t help but think that if these two characters were cut, and the runtime of the movie was subsequently trimmed by thirty minutes or so, we’d all be better off.

The first act of the film was my least favorite part, but to its credit it does get incrementally better from there, but unfortunately it never soars.

The third act is much more blatantly symbolic than the previous acts, such as when Manny descends into a near literal hell that becomes more and more disgusting and denigrating with every circle, and that approach resonated with me, which was a contrast to the first half of the film.

ALL LIGHT, NO HEAT

Pitt’s acting mirrors the film’s failings and successes. In the first two-thirds of the movie, Pitt gives a rather shallow, smirky and one-note Pitt-ian performance. He’s Brad Pitt, one of the biggest movie stars in the world, playing a character that is one of the biggest movie stars in the world…get it? But in the third act, Pitt eschews his empty movie star magnetism for a melancholy that actually becomes quite moving.

Margot Robbie is a luminously beautiful women, and she’s certainly ambitious – not unlike her character Nellie LaRoy, but there is something off about her in every performance she gives (I also just saw her in the most recent David O. Russell film Amsterdam and oh dear…but that is a discussion for another day). Whether it’s her over-reliance on a sort of old-timey New Yawk accent or what, I can’t quite figure just yet, but she always appears to be “acting” and everything she does feels mechanical and manufactured.

In Babylon Robbie works her ass off, of that there is no doubt, but it never coalesces into anything captivating. There’s lots of over-the-top yelling and gyrating and manic pixie dream girl mania and hysteria, but never anything that ever feels genuine or grounded.

Diego Calva is a pleasing screen presence, but his character Manny is under-written, as is his love story, and he never really gets his hands wrapped around this whole unwieldy thing to find its sweet spot.

As for the rest of the cast, it’s a mixed bag or worse. For instance, Jean Smart is overall pretty dreadful as a gossip columnist, but she does give a very effective monologue late in the movie that works quite well.

Eric Roberts plays Nellie’s dad and is utterly atrocious.

Lukas Haas plays Conrad’s producer and best friend and it’s an awkward and totally forgettable piece of work.

Tobey Maguire plays a crazy mob boss in a scene that is very, very similar to the “Sister Christian” scene from Boogie Nights, except this time there’s no firecrackers but instead a bodyguard who spits at random intervals. The scene could’ve been great I suppose, but just never comes together, and Maguire’s character is a freaky sideshow lacking gravitas.

The biggest issue with the acting is the same issue with the movie, it’s all light and no heat. There’s lots of yelling but nobody says anything.

It must be said that Linus Sandgren’s cinematography is at times glorious (even when seen through a sub-par projector which unfortunately is the case in most theaters nowadays), and the music and score by Justin Hurwitz (who won an Academy Award for the music in La La Land) are terrific.

It’s somewhat intriguing that Babylon is either a companion piece to La La Land or its outright prequel. Chazelle makes this fact pretty clear by repeatedly using an integral piece of Hurwitz’s music from La La Land as a cornerstone of Babylon.

The ethereal La La Land - the dream of Hollywood, contrasted with the nightmare of Babylon, is an intriguing formula, if only Babylon could hold up its end of the bargain.

A MOVIE ABOUT THE END OF AN ERA, MADE AT THE END OF AN ERA

I concede that making a movie about the impact of technology on the movie business and how Hollywood ruthlessly makes difficult transitions, is insightful in this era where streaming moves the earth beneath Hollywood’s feet and, much to my chagrin, auteur movies - like Babylon, face the real possibility of extinction. I also admit that as a fan of Damien Chazelle and also due to the evolution/devolution of the film business which seriously threatens to end the auteur era which I love so much, there’s a part of me that desperately wants to adore Babylon and declare that making a decidedly decadent movie about Hollywood decadence is in fact clever if not ingenious, but if I’m being honest, I have to say it’s actually pretty trite.

Ultimately, I wanted Babylon to be great and to my disappointment it wasn’t even good, instead it’s a messy misfire of a movie that’s an empty imitation of other more worthy films. I cannot recommend seeing Babylon in the theatre, but if you really want to see it wait until it hits a streaming service, that way the long run time and derivative drama will be more digestible, if not necessarily palatable.

©2023

La La Land : A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!****

Estimated Reading Time : 5 minutes and 44 seconds

My Rating : 4 out of 5 stars.

My Recommendation : SEE IT. Take the time and effort and go see it in the theatre as it is a very enjoyable film.

La La Land, written and directed by Damien Chazelle, is the story of Sebastian, a struggling jazz musician and Mia, an aspiring actress, who meet and fall in love in Los Angeles. The film stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone with supporting turns by John Legend and Rosemary DeWitt.

La La Land is one of those movies that critics and layman alike will all undoubtedly describe as "charming and delightful". A big reason why they will describe it as "charming and delightful' is because it really is "charming and delightful". As cynical as I am, and goodness knows I am very cynical when it comes to Hollywood, La La Land with its vibrantly contagious spirit, was able to break through any resistance I had to it and will most likely breakthrough with other, less jaded viewers as well.

A major factor in La La Land's charm and delightfulness are the two leads. Both Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are incredibly likable actors and they are at their most agreeable as Sebastian and Mia. For as handsome as Gosling is, and he is impossibly handsome, he is somehow able to play a somewhat abrasive, jazz-purist oddball with a remarkably grounded appeal and subtle charisma. Emma Stone gives an enchantingly strong performance as Mia, the under-employed actress and barista. Stone is able to exude an inner vivacious luminosity that gives her an undeniable magnetism and presence on screen. The fact is, both of these actors are so enjoyable together and have such electric chemistry, that you could watch them banter, flirt and perform with each other for days on end. 

The script and the direction are very well done by Damien Chazelle, who proved with his last film, the critically-acclaimed Whiplash, that he is a formidable filmmaking talent. Once again Chazelle has music in general, and jazz in particular, at the center of his story. Chazelle is really gifted at visually portraying music and musicians in a genuine and realist way, which many filmmakers fail to accomplish. Chazelle's camera becomes just another instrument in the band and another partner in the dance, making the entire film not just a musical, but a piece of musical art, a piece of dance art and piece of cinematic art all at once. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren  paints the Los Angeles of La La Land with a lush and gorgeous palette, creating a vivid and intoxicating dreamscape.

The dance numbers in La La Land are pretty remarkable in that they are almost all done in one take, which is no small feat with such complicated blocking. The thing to realize as you watch La La Land's musical numbers is that Chazelle doesn't use a static camera, like they did in say the Oscar winning musical Chicago, so not only must the choreography of the dancers and performers be perfect, but the choreography of the camera must be integrated as well.

La La Land is a staggering technical accomplishment when you take the intricacies of the musical numbers and the filmmaking process into account. It is also a truly unique and original piece of work that manages to pay homage to the classic Hollywood musicals of yesteryear yet also reinvents that genre with a new, sort of everyman, millennial day-dreamer musical. 

La La Land works on many levels. It is a tribute to Hollywood's distant and not-so distant past (there is a hidden homage to Boogie Nights in it that only the most eagle-eyed will catch) and is also an examination of the life of an artist in a world of commercialism. In addition, the film is a testament to keeping the faith and staying the path in terms of one's artistic purity. Both Sebastian and Mia have to suffer the slings and arrows of the commercial life in order to gather the courage to return to their artistic roots to find fulfillment and happiness which in turn morphs into commercial success, in other words, the Hollywood circle of life. But, as any struggling actor or musician will testify, the battle for artistic purity is never as cut and dried as the artist wishes it were. For example, Sebastian is a jazz purist, but is a demand for jazz purity the reason jazz is dying? Chazelle asks this same type of question of his audience regarding cinema while paying homage to the old Astaire musicals that purists adore, but he presents that tribute in a new, less purist and more populist, package, which is pretty brilliant. 

La La Land is a layered film that can be enjoyed on many levels. You can watch and enjoy it as a pure rom-com, or a love story, or a musical, or an homage to Hollywood or a mediation on the artists struggle, or a combination of all of these. It is tough to watch La La Land and not be overcome by its unrelentingly joyous energy. I recommend you spend your hard earned money and sparse free time by going to see La La Land in the theaters, I think you will find it worth the time and effort.

La La Land will no doubt win a boatload of awards at this years Oscars because Hollywood loves nothing more than movies about itself. I know, I know, you are shocked to hear that Hollywood is so rapaciously narcissistic, it is like hearing that Wall Street is greedy or D.C. corrupt, it can be jarring to realize...but I promise you that it really is true. Besides Hollywood rewarding movies that are about Hollywood, it also loves musicals, even the dreadful ones like Chicago, which means a good one like La La Land is going to be sitting pretty come Oscar Sunday. I assume that Gosling, Stone, Chazelle and a cinematographer Linus Sandgren along with a plethora of behind-the-scenes artists will be nominated and most likely win Oscars as well as the film getting Best Picture. While I thoroughly enjoyed the film, my award voting preferences trend toward more existential and substantial material, so I wouldn't necessarily vote the same way as the Academy. That said, I also won't complain when Hollywood rewards La La Land. There is no sense in complaining here in Hollywood, for as Jake Gittes' partner Lawrence Walsh so eloquently taught me in the film Chinatown, "Forget it, Jake. Its Chinatown." So on Oscar night, as Martin Scorsese and Silence, and Terence Malick and Knight of Cups get overlooked, I'll just keep reminding myself..."Forget it, Mick. It's La La Land."

©2017

Whiplash : A Review

**WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!! THIS IS YOUR OFFICIAL AND FINAL SPOILER ALERT!!**

Whiplash, written and directed by newcomer Damien Chazelle, and starring Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons, is one of the best, if not the best film of the year. The film tells the story of 19 year old Andrew Neiman (Teller), an aspiring and ambitious jazz drummer in his first year at the acclaimed Shaffer Conservatory, and his relationship with the school's infamously demanding conductor, Terence Fletcher (Simmons). 

The film is nearly impeccable in all areas. First time director, Chazelle, masterfully creates and maintains a palpable tension throughout the entirety of the story. The storytelling is so streamlined and efficient that there is not one wasted scene or even a wasted moment. Every single moment is built upon the previous and builds toward the next. 

The performances by Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons are unquestionably brilliant. Both actors deserve, at a minimum, Oscar nominations, as does Chazelle for the script and his direction. Watching this film and their performances in it, reminds me why I love cinema and acting as much as I do. This is one of those films which gives me hope that exquisitely sublime acting can still matter, and that artistic films of tremendous quality can overcome a business model and public that more often than not discounts them in favor of mindless big-budget retreads and sequels.

Miles Teller as Andrew, plays the awkward teenager, struggling to fit in and make his way in the world, so perfectly that it is, at times, uncomfortable to watch. There are no seams to Teller's performance at all, he simply inhabits Andrew in all his discomfort, desperation, need, ambition, sweetness and ugliness. Teller never makes a false step by veering into sentimentality or manipulation. He so thoroughly brings Andrew to life in such a genuine and organic way that Andrew feels familiar to us and so we recognize him from our own lives, as maybe our son, a brother, a desperate friend or God forbid…ourselves. The skill and power of Teller's performance binds us to Andrew so that we cringe with him, celebrate with him and deflate with him through all of his ups and downs. 

J.K. Simmons as Terence Fletcher has an energy that is so concentrated and direct that it is palpable. He pulsates with a focused ferocity and cutting brutality that is as magnetic as it is repulsive. His performance is, like Miles Teller's, the work of a master craftsman. It is specific, precise and distinct yet irresistibly dynamic. When Simmon's Fletcher unleashes his wrath, those around him only pray that he doesn't direct that energy at them, and when he directs it at someone else they put their head down, keep their mouth shut and thank the good Lord that it's the other guy getting it and not them. Fletcher is a cruel bully who emotionally, physically and mentally abuses all around him, but by the end of the film he is proven to be not only vindictive and vicious…but effective. Simmons makes this ferocious and callous man Fletcher a real person, so that even in his remorseless brutality to those around him, we never feel he lacks passion or doesn't care…it is just what he cares about and if it's too much, that is in question. Fletcher is interested in transcendent greatness, and will do most anything to see it form before him, including destroying those who lack the skill, and more importantly, the will, to be great.

The Fletcher character reminds me of the quote from the Bhagavad Gita, "Now I become death, the destroyer of worlds." Fletcher is death, the destroyer of Andrew's world and the world of all artists who aspire to exalted greatness. Fletcher is destroyer to Andrew's ego, his self-image, his worldview, his hopes and his dreams. All those things must be destroyed in order for Andrew, and all artists, to complete the hero's journey and become, not just a man, but a god who walks upon the earth. Andrew must leave his father, and his father's approach to the world (settling for 'good enough') and embrace Fletcher's (the unrelenting search for greatness), even if it is through spite and vengeance toward Fletcher, in order to complete his hero's journey. Andrew must be emptied in order to find the greatness that lives deep with him. Fletcher is the one who destroys Andrew's self and leaves him bloodied and broken in front of the world, and in that naked humiliation, at his lowest point, devoid of everything, Andrew is able to discover the greatness that was hidden within him all along. It is his anger and hatred at Fletcher that at first brings the needed vitality to birth this newfound greatness, but once it breathes the air of life and becomes manifest in the world, Andrew's anger and rage towards Fletcher fades and he is left in a state of near religious ecstasy as he becomes one with his drums in musical precision, passion and perfection. 

Whiplash works not only as a straight forward story of a young man coming of age as an artist and overcoming obstacles to do so, but it is also a great mythical tale of the hero's journey into the sacred ground of the gods and the gatekeeper who protects that sacred ground. Andrew is, of course, the hero on the journey, and Fletcher is the gatekeeper, be it the dragon, or Cerberus or the Sphinx, who puts all initiates to the test, and only those who pass his grueling gauntlet will be allowed into the inner sanctum of the gods where the treasure of golden music resides. Andrew must answer all questions posed to him, and survive all tests Fletcher-dragon puts to him, in order to even be considered for entry into the revered ground. And even after passing the tests, it isn't until Andrew releases his old self, symbolized as his being son to his father, and he walks away from his father and takes the offensive against the tyrannical Fletcher-dragon, is he able to prove his courage and worth and gain entry into the sacred land of the gods, where Apollo, Greek god of music, or Saraswati, Hindu Goddess of music, or Dionyssus, god of religious ecstasy and ritual madness, is conjured and made manifest in Andrew's playing. He then stops playing the drums, and the drums start playing him, the music and Andrew, are in the hands of the gods now, and the music that is a result of this mystical and supernatural intercourse is gloriously divine.

The hero's journey that Andrew embarks on is the same journey that all artists, be they musicians, actors or writers must go through. In my experience as an acting coach and teacher, the struggle I most often see is that of aspiring actors being unable to truly empty themselves and lose their old self in order to embrace the new self that is waiting for them if they only would have the courage to make the leap towards it. In working with actors, I am often reminded of the 'oedipal' section of The Doors song "The End" in which Jim Morrison sings of killing his father and fucking his mother. So many actresses I have seen need to kill their father, symbolically of course, to free themselves from the fear of his judgement, in order to become great. Actors need to kill their mothers (and fathers) in order to stop being sons, in other words children, and start being men.  Like Andrew, sons are always on the defensive, but when they 'kill their fathers', like Andrew did in walking away from his father, they are then free to go on the offensive, which is where freedom lies.  It has been my experience that the overwhelming majority of both actors and actresses lack the courage and the will to symbolically kill their parents, and their work suffers as a result of it. Parental judgment, whether real or imagined, can, and almost always does, destroy the freedom needed for artistic greatness to flourish, and leaves in it's wake the lesser choices of entertaining and performing. Thus all artists who strive for greatness must at some point kill their parents, again symbolically, in order to be free and empty enough to enter the hallowed ground of the gods where true greatness lies. Only once an artist kills their parents will they be able to complete their hero's journey by slaying their own personal Fletcher-dragon. This is the story of Whiplash, and it is the story for all of us who answer that most divine of calls, the sacred call to be an artist.

© 2014

FOR REVIEWS OF OTHER FILMS RELEASED DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON, PLEASE CLICK ON THESE LINKS TO THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING , BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) , FOXCATCHER , WILD , AMERICAN SNIPER , THE IMITATION GAME , A MOST VIOLENT YEAR , NIGHTCRAWLER , STILL ALICE , INHERENT VICE , SELMA , MR. TURNER , CAKE .