Babylon review: a fiery, passionate love letter to early Hollywood

It was made from a nitrate basis and it was America’s first readily available film stock. Highly flammable and barely stable, this nitrate film — used from the earliest days of filmmaking until the introduction of safer acetate film stock in the 1940s and ’50s — became more dangerous with age if it wasn’t cared for properly: It released flammable gas as it decomposed into goo, then dust. It was capable of spontaneously burning, which would have set history ablaze on hot summer days.

This led to the loss of countless films. There were fires in a Fox film vault in 1937, in MGM’s in 1965, in the National Archives in 1978. Because the heat of projectors could often ignite the nitrate film they were running through, projection booth fires were common in silent-film times.

What about the remaining nitrate film stock of that era? It has been largely lost to decay. In Bill Morrison’s 2002 avant-garde film DecasiaScenes from silent-era movies are shown in collage as they are in their decaying states. Images that used to display great emotion and intrigue have been overtaken or lost by time.

Yet the film stars who once brought people to see these films still dreamt of immortality.

Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

Everyone wants immortality BabylonThe divisive, new film by Damien Chazelle (awarded writer-director). Whiplash, La La LandAnd The First Man. It starts at the top: Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) is the biggest movie star in Hollywood at the peak of the silent-film era, surveying his kingdom with pride, knowing he’s fueling the dreams of the common folk and has built something that will last. Nellie LaRoy, a perennial Harley Quinn Margot Robertbie), has only a name that is her own and believes she should be as famous as Conrad. Manny Torres is the waiter at the rich, who hopes to make something last like a movie.

BabylonFollow the fortunes and fates of the three of them and those around them over many years. It starts with an extended party, a raucous bacchanal all three of them attend — Jack as a guest of honor, Manny as the help, and Nellie as a party-crasher. It is the same story Hollywood continues to tell about Hollywood and its support staff: A story about big dreams that can lead to a great life for some people crazy enough.

Over Babylon’s 188-minute run time, Nellie and Manny see their stocks rise. Through grit, a little luck and some right-place at the right time, the former is the superstar she believed she was. The 1927 premier of The Jazz Singer throws showbiz off its axis, and Jack Conrad’s world begins to fall apart. Then everyone’s world follows, because fame is fickle and fleeting, and no one gets to be on top forever.

Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

The movie-lover can easily sing this song, and Chazelle has been doing it since at least 2008. WhiplashHis breakout movie was “The Artist.” His stories are about extraordinary people who dare to dream, who drag themselves from the wreckage — literally, in some cases — to realize that dream and be lionized for it, even if it costs them everything else in their lives. In Chazelle’s cinematic vision, art is more vital and beautiful than life itself, and the people who would set themselves ablaze for art, whether in Earth’s orbit or behind a drum kit, are the noblest of souls.

A message like this — pursuing fame is an act of hubris, and artists are transcendent in their foolish vainglory — is highly dependent on its messenger, and Babylon dances on a razor’s edge from its first frame. Chazelle and his longtime editor Tom Cross, as well as Justin Hurwitz, the composer, are some of the best dance partners in movies today.

There’s a musicality to Chazelle’s films as he, Hurwitz, and Cross use the visual medium of film with the improvisational vigor of jazz musicians, and BabylonTheir show-stopper is the saxophone. To get people moving, the cuts are played in syncopated rhythms. Bold and bright colors blur the lines between images and the music that drives them. The camera lingers on performers and performances: a showstopping, manic dance from Nellie LaRoy in the film’s opening bash/orgy, a drunken climb up a hill by Jack Conrad, utterly wasted, right before he miraculously pulls himself together to deliver a perfect take. The tightening of Manny’s brow and lips as he assumes the role of an executive, and does whatever it takes to convince the movers and shakers that he belongs in the room with them.

Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

For all that, Babylon’s glorying in art and artists, in Hollywood and dreams, it would all be in vain without a compelling reason Why. Here is the place where film can be volatile. Its title deliberately evokes Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth Anger’s notorious (and largely fabricated) 1959 tell-all about the golden age of Tinseltown, a book that helped cement in the public consciousness the idea that the glitz and glamour of show business came part and parcel with a seedy underbelly of sex, drugs, and violence — often at the cost of women and queer people caught under its sensational gaze, and the tabloids that preceded or followed the book’s publication.

BabylonThe sensationalism of the film is evident in its title and its opening party. This orgy culminates in an elephant walking through a mansion trying to distract attention from the corpse of a girl who took too much after having a sexual rendezvous. As Nellie’s and Manny’s fortunes rise, staying in the game forces them both to make compromises that chip away at their humanity. Nellie is a fiery, hot woman who turns to gambling and drugs. Some, such as Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), are forced to give up their jobs due to her fervent appetite. Manny’s naked ambition causes him to treat other marginalized people as stepping stones, going as far as to ask Black trumpeter Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo) to perform in blackface in order to appease markets in the South, keep a shoot on schedule, and save his bosses’ money.

Nellie and Manny’s beautiful encounter at the very beginning BabylonThis signals their rise. The film ties them again as they fall in freefall, even though it builds towards its end. Their rapid descent reaches its nadir as Manny embarks on a trip to Hollywood’s version of hell, hosted by loan shark and lurid thrillseeker James McKay (Tobey Maguire, one of Babylon’s producers, playing wonderfully against type). In his hands, the salacious orgy of the film’s opening meets its horrific opposite.

Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

Babylon is long enough that it can cause viewers to wonder — multiple times! — whether sensationalism and navel-gazing are the film’s only tricks. It echoes sensational shock and amazement of the star machine and invites viewers to marvel at its horror and wonder. But Chazelle is deft enough to suggest, more than once, that he’s playing at something deeper and more challenging.

This is the most general reading. BabylonIt is a profane ode to film as an uniquely collective medium. This movie gathers the hopes and dreams for everyone who sees it. Film celebrates cinema, the ultimate end result, and a good reason for the messy, broken individuals to commit suicide in the act. In one of the film’s best scenes, Jack Conrad confronts entertainment journalist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart) over a negative profile she wrote. Elinor responds to Jack Conrad by telling him that neither of their opinions matter. They do. Other stars will appear, as well as journalists. However, they all serve the purpose of the light beam that projects onto the silver screen.

This is a story that has already been told. We’ve seen it in bona fide classics like Singin’ in the RainThese are also used in recent works, such as the 2011 Best Picture Winner The Artist. They both have similar plots and were made in the same period. Chazelle is even a fan of Hollywood. La La LandHis musical is about an aspirant actress singing about dreams. BabylonIn all its fury and sound, it is unnecessary. Chazelle then makes a last, audacious turn: In the text, he acknowledges it.

Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

It was an amazing finale Babylon marries bombast and tragedy in one fell swoop, embracing Chazelle’s hubris as an artist by letting him insert himself into the cinematic canon, while he’s endeavoring to earn his place there at the same time. In its final moments, he isn’t content to just tell another story about the rarefied few who dreamed, and built an empire where countless others could dream along with them. Instead, he weeps over what was destroyed to keep that dream alive, and what’s been forgotten so others can hope to be remembered.

Babylon’s most significant moments don’t come during the big events in Nellie, Jack, or Manny’s stories. They’re the quieter scenes, tracking what happens in the wake of their flaming parabolic arcs. They’re about the people who are forced out of the business or choose to walk away — the queer people forced into hiding to bolster studios’ public image, the marginalized forced to bear indignities so white actors can chase immortality.

This is the Babylon of the film’s title: The burnished image left behind after the people who built it are gone. It is easy to get caught up in the magic of movies and only see Jack Conrad, or Damien Chazelle — and if that’s all you see in BabylonRepulsion may be natural. However, Babylon is also concerned with what happens in the periphery of Hollywood’s white heroes. Chazelle shoots his stars with a lens wide enough that it’s not hard to see who lingers in the periphery, and the parts they have to play. Pay attention to those who come and go. BabylonTheir nitrate becomes a cacophonous dirge, they weep for the loss of their anonymity and all that it brought at their expense. Our nitrate went up and burned, leaving us with little fairy tales of eternal life.

BabylonOn December 23, the premiere will be in theatres.