Babylon Review of the film starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie te

Babylon it is a testament to the magic of cinema. not just because Damien Chazelle romanticizes the Golden Age of Hollywood, honoring its beauty, unpredictability, progression and celebrity quite the opposite. Precisely because of its stumbling blocks, Chazelle’s epic seems like the good old “declaration of love to the cinema”. Nothing would test the strength of the seventh art more than a film like Babylon, rife with excess, excrement (yes, all kinds), hateful characters and shaky messages, and still manages to be magical and undeniably gorgeous.

Part of this comes from the fact that, storywise, Chazelle has no ambition to build anything more than a reinterpretation of Cantando na Chuva (a trap by definition), with an emphasis on the silenttotalkie transition and the Uproar from lies the familiarization period for agents at all levels of Hollywood. Here we follow a host of stars and rising stars: the pinnacle of Jack Conrad’s career (Brad Pitt), the rise of Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) and Manny’s Rise (Diego Calva), also traversed by the paths of the industry’s marginalized, with glimpses of the life of Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), a Chinese comedian, and Sidney Palmer (jovan adepo), a black trumpeter who finds his way into film orchestras.

The possibilities are endless with this cast of characters, but Chazelle finds it hard to take her eyes off her main interest, cast in the same mold as the melancholy, perfectionist protagonists of her filmography, this time embodied by Jack Conrad. It doesn’t matter that Diego Calva skillfully delivers what is surely a more charismatic and multilayered character, or that Sidney and Fay Zhu offer a lot more in terms of exploiting the industry. The filmmaker focuses on Jack and Nellie or Pitt and Margot and the reason is simple: the stars, known for their allure, play idyllic and superficial characters, and Babilônia isn’t interested in delving into any of their characters . For that reason alone, it’s worth noting that the portrayal of the “Hollywood misfit” has a bitter aftertaste from someone who, after some controversy, was brought on out of obligation at La La Land.

The reward is that the movement is part of a much larger desire to put on a show and that Babilônia, Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz, composer and frequent partner of the director, is doing very well. From the opening scene that expands into an extravagant and orgiastic celebration of Hollywood’s golden days, but mainly into a lengthy sequence exploring the perrengues of a film set, Babilônia’s production is irresistibly engaging, captured with visible passion by the alliance of Chazelle and her cinematographer , Linus Sandgren.

The idea is basically to never stop in one place, conveying the sense of chaos, anarchy and turmoil of a particular time, emphasizing the dangers and injustices of this scenario, but finally connecting perrengue with a sense of purpose and reward. And while Babylon tries to give it a certain sense of the absurd, the film doesn’t avoid the classic smug attitude of these tales. It’s a tortuous path that frantically shakes the camera in lifeloathing finally stopping to inhale the flight of a butterfly. It is beautiful to behold, funny, perfectly acted and well packaged in Hurwitz’s harmonic disorder. Whether that all makes sense or fits well is another story.

The fact is that Babilônia doesn’t pay much attention to what he says, not least because his main thesis that of the immortality of cinematographic value, that “the actor plays no part, but his work will live forever” all the time is at odds with the absurdities that Chazelle decides to bring to the screen. The speech, spoken aloud by one of the film’s best characters, journalist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), sounds cool at the time when it was difficult to imagine the lasting impact of cinematographic works. Besides the lavish selfimportance, the idea itself contrasts with what Babilônia actually represents in the end: that in the end and fortunately all of this was absolutely accidental or ephemeral.

Chazelle seems confused by everything he wants to say, what to focus on, and what message to convey, especially when he sets out to voice his ideas. Babylon sounds like a nostalgic epic of a dangerous time which, unable to stand its ground on its foundations, reaches into the future in order to be able to explain itself. That’s why everything the director wants to say is presented much better in a totally cheesy montage about the magic of cinema, which is exposed in the last section of Babilônia. It’s odd and a little ridiculous, yes, but the audacity to end such an aesthetically cohesive film with a jumble of absurd images is admirable.

It is therefore difficult to overlook the inventiveness that Chazelle displays in Babilônia, even if the film’s three hours demonstrate its complete technical maturity. It’s a bit sweet, like the flight of a butterfly, when you decide to watch a movie that’s odd in its morals. In the end, almost inadvertently, he proves his point, because few things can save a questionable film: Babylon has them all for its own good.