Babylon (2022) by Damien Chazelle (no spoilers in OP)

Cafe Society
1

I spent my a Christmas afternoon at the movies alone and boy howdy did I get a wild ride. I didn’t know much about Babylon except that it was about old Hollywood and had Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie. That was enough for me to pay for the ticket.

I didn’t even know that it was by the guy who wore and directed La La Land and that’s a good thing because I hated hated hated that movie and I might have skipped this one had I known.

This movie is just mayhem from beginning to end and it’s glorious spectacle.

I think I said “OH MY GOD!!” out loud at least three times before the title card.

Brad Pitt is good as usual, but well backed by the whole cast, including Jean Smart.

Even Tobey Maguire, who normally kills every scene he appears in, was serviceable in his small role.

And Margot Robbie is just a motherfucking nuclear bomb. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on screen. Just electric. She vibrates off the screen.

Highly recommend for in theater viewing.

Let’s hold plot spoilers until after January 1? As a courtesy for our fellow Dopers. Thanks!

2

I saw the movie today and enjoyed it thoroughly. (Unlike you, though, I really liked La La Land.) I’ve seen three movies so far this holiday season; The Fabelmans, Empire of Light and this one, and they have a thematic connection, in that they’re all about the movies.

And without introducing spoilers, various characters seemed meant to resemble certain real-life movie personalities.

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I think it’s okay to say that, for example, Margot Robbie plays a character based on the real Clara Bow, without revealing plot points.

Most of the other characters are amalgams of several real people.

4

I assume Dewey_Finn is talking about that one scene early in the movie where that thing happened to that person, which was based on that real life scandal.

I thought the movie got very heavy-handed at the end, and thought itself more important than it is. But I generally enjoyed it a lot. The vitriol some have for this movie is baffling.

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Yes, she seems obviously modeled on Clara Bow.

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Yes, the ending was very surreal/experimental/self-important, but the rest of the movie was a very entertaining wild ride.

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Here are some other real-life counterparts that I don’t think will spoil the movie (from Slate’s review):

Jean Smart - character based on journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns and novelist Elinor Glyn

Brad Pitt - character based on actor John Gilbert

Olivia Hamilton - character based on director Dorothy Arzner

Li Jun Li - character based on Anna May Wong

Jovan Adepo - character based on musicians such as Curtis Mosby and Les Hite

Diego Calva - character based on people like Rene Cardona

I think it’s important to point out that these characters are based on actual people, lest people start complaining that the movie is being “PC woke” by depicting women, LGB people, Hispanic people, Asian people, etc., in creative roles. No, pre-code Hollywood did have some degree of diversity to an extent that even today hasn’t been matched.

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Also, the scene in which Jack Conrad is in the chorus performing “Singin in the Rain” was recreating one from a real film called The Hollywood Revue of 1929. John Gilbert appeared in the real scene.

(Also, The New York Times has an article (gift link) describing some of the real-life bases of the characters.)

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This is getting such mixed reviews that I feel compelled to go find out who is correct. If I can find a date, will see it this weekend.

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I reviewed this in the Recently Seen thread. The TLDR version is summed up by my first sentence:

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Got a date, saw it, this is a wonderful mess of a movie. I got a lot of the references, missed a lot more. This is Margot Robbie’s film regardless what the credits say. The ending was a bit disjointed but while the landing was wobbly, it remained upright.

My favorite joke was a drunk Brad Pitt playing Bergman’s Death from The Seventh Seal as he led a camera crew up a hill. This movie is also a sendup of another movie, but since I’m posting this before 1.1.23, you’ll just have to see it to find out.

I can totally see Toby McGuire being that way in real life.

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OK, it’s 1.1.23 and I haven’t stopped thinking of this movie, which is a good thing. When Jake Sully flew that Pandoran dragon beastie, I literally gasped.

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Does that mean it’s yet another “hurrah for jazz, the apex of artistic achievement” propaganda film? Or did he deviate from type here?

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Jazz was an element of the film, but hardly the focus.

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Lol, yeah gotta say of everything I could have possibly expected to see in Babylon, a clip from Avatar was the most surprising.

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I’m no jazz fan, but if someone wanted to make a movie with the theme that jazz is the apex of artistic achievement, E could have made a good one. La La Land was not a good one. There was no chemistry between the boring leads, the dialogue was dull, the songs were mediocre, the dance sequences were derivative and uninteresting, and the movie absolutely failed to persuade me that the dude was good at anything, much less music. That one little musical figure or theme that he kept playing over and over did not persuade me that he was any good at jazz, or that jazz was any good. The “relationship” story was neither interesting nor emotionally absorbing. I couldn’t give a shit about either of them, their relationship, or their careers.

But enough about La La Land.

Spoilers from now on
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Babylon was a glorious, outrageous, gorgeous extravaganza of excess. The principal actors–Brad Pitt, Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo, and Jean Smart–gave solid performances. And Margot Robbie just blazed like a fireball.

That first scene with her on a movie set for the first time, when it looked like she was about to choke hard, and then she just lit up into possibly the most erotic performance I’ve ever seen on film. That was amazing. Every time I saw Margot Robbie’s eyes, it was like looking into a blazing blue star. Two of them.

The set pieces were absolutely amazing: An elephant takes a huge shit right on me. Oh my god! A prostitute straddles Troy Metcalf and urinates all over him. Oh my god! Margot Robbie and Diego Calva sit at a table with mounds of cocaine so big, it looks like they’re going to bake bread with it. Down at Jeff Garlin’s party, people straight up start fucking on the dance floor.

I think I said “Oh my god!” out loud several times during that sequence, and giggled, and half covered my eyes, and clapped my hands (not at the same time).

Tobey Maguire–and I had no idea he was in this movie–was made for his role in this movie. In fact, I’m not sure he was acting very much when he played a creepy as fuck, rich as fuck, degenerate and deviant gambling mobster. And that sequence … more oh my god!s

The ending with the blip-clips from movies from the beginning of film to the present was weird, but, Jesus Effin Cervantes, how do you end a movie like that anyway?

And where La La Land was derivative, this movie was instead paying homage to movies of the past as well as tropes and such. I probably caught less than half the references, making this one a candidate for revisiting.

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Saw it again. (Different date.) Still a fantastic movie, as mentioned above my date also said “Oh my God!” at least 3 times.

18

Finally saw it yesterday. I had really wanted to see it in the theater and I can’t decide if I’m disappointed or not that I didn’t. Scatological scenes are almost a deal breaker for me, so massive amounts of elephant shit and projectile vomiting on a huge screen would not be a plus, but the costumes and sets - hooboy! What a feast for the eyes.

Speaking of feasts for the eyes, Margo Robbie is just uncommonly beautiful and a fine actress but I was very distracted by her contemporary styling. Obviously a deliberate choice and I don’t understand the reasoning behind it. Her frenetic dancing also didn’t quite fit (though she looks gorgeous doing it).

I enjoyed it but would probably only recommend it to fairly “serious” movie fans and / or folks who are especially interested in old Hollywood.