Babylon

Babylon is a 2022 American epic period comedy-drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It is set in the 1920s, during Hollywood's transition from silent films to sound films. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, and Jean Smart. Its plot chronicles the rise and fall of multiple characters during Hollywood's transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s.
Chazelle began developing the film in July 2019, with Lionsgate Films as the frontrunner to acquire the project. It was subsequently announced that Paramount Pictures had acquired worldwide rights in November 2019. Much of the main cast joined the project between January 2020 and August 2021, and filming took place in Los Angeles from July to October 2021.
Babylon premiered in Los Angeles on December 15, 2022, and was released in the United States on December 23, 2022, by Paramount Pictures. The film polarized critics, who generally praised the cinematography, editing, score, and performances, but were divided on its screenplay, direction, graphic content, and runtime, with the reception in general being significantly more muted than Chazelle's previous films. It received five nominations at the 80th Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, winning Best Original Score for Justin Hurwitz, and nine nominations at the 28th Critics' Choice Awards, including Best Picture. It was a box-office bomb with a gross of $13.9 million against a production budget of around $78 million.
==Plot==
In 1926 Los Angeles, Mexican immigrant Manuel "Manny" Torres helps transport an elephant to a debauched bacchanal (orgy, cocaine, phallic-shaped pogo stick) at a Kinoscope Studios executive's mansion. He quickly becomes smitten with Nellie LaRoy, a brash, ambitious self-declared "star" from New Jersey. Upon meeting her, Manny reveals his wish to be part of something bigger. While the elephant walks through, distracting partygoers, Manny helps carry away young actress Jane Thornton, who overdosed on drugs during an urolagniac act with obese actor Orville Pickwick.
Also attending are Chinese-American lesbian cabaret singer Lady Fay Zhu, and African-American jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer. The flamboyantly-dancing Nellie is spotted and swiftly recruited to replace Jane in a Kinoscope film; during filming, she crudely upstages the star. Manny meets and befriends Jack Conrad, a benevolent but troubled, oft-married film star, and drives a drunken Jack home. Jack helps Manny secure assistant jobs at Kinoscope (like finding a new camera to film an outdoors scene with Jack before nightfall); Manny climbs the studio system's ranks.
Nellie quickly becomes an "it girl" covered by gossip columnist Elinor St. John, who also follows Jack's career. As sound film displaces silents in the late-1920s, Manny skillfully adapts to technical changes, eventually attaining directorial jobs. Nellie struggles to navigate sound film's demands, and increases her drug use and reckless gambling, tarnishing her reputation despite Manny's assistance.
Nellie (who is shown to have an institutionalized mother), during a party, eggs on her drunken father (and inept business manager) to publicly fight a rattlesnake; he passes out and she fights the snake, which bites her neck. Fay kills it and sucks out the venom; Nellie passionately kisses her. While running lines with his new wife Estelle, Jack is devastated to learn his longtime friend/producer, George Munn, has died by suicide.
By 1932, Jack begins to sense that his popularity has waned, but still works in low-budget Kinoscope films. Meanwhile, Sidney has secured his own musical film and orchestra, but is offended when studio executives convince Manny to request he use makeup to darken his skin for Southern audiences. Upon completion, Sidney leaves Kinoscope. As Hollywood becomes less libertine, executives tell Manny to fire Fay, a Kinoscope title writer, because of her perceived lesbian affair with Nellie. Elinor and Manny attempt to revamp Nellie's image and ingratiate her into Hollywood's high society, but Nellie lashes out against upper-class snobbery at a party, vomiting on a host.
Jack finds a cover story by Elinor about his declining popularity and confronts her; she explains that his star has faded, but he will be immortalized on film. Meanwhile, eccentric gangster James McKay threatens Nellie's life over her massive gambling debts. Manny initially rejects her pleas for help, but later secures funds from on-set drug pusher/aspiring actor "The Count", and visits James with him to pay off Nellie's debt. Manny panics upon learning the money is fake, made by his own prop-maker. James invites the men to a subterranean gathering space for debauched parties, raving about potential film ideas. When James realizes the cash is fake, he attempts to kill them, but they narrowly escape, killing James' henchman.
Manny asks Nellie to flee with him to Mexico, marry, and start a new life. She resists, but eventually agrees. However, James' associate tracks Manny down, killing The Count and his roommate but sparing Manny's life if Manny leaves Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Nellie reneges on her decision and dances away into the night. Jack encounters Fay at a hotel party; she reveals her departure for Europe. Afterwards, a despondent Jack returns to his hotel room and shoots himself.
A montage reveals newspaper clippings detailing Nellie's death in a hotel room at age 34, and Elinor's death at age 76.
In 1952, Manny returns to California with his wife and young daughter, having fled to New York Cityand established a radio shop. He shows them the Kinoscope Studios entrance, but visits a nearby cinema alone to see Singin' in the Rain, where the film's depiction of the industry's transition from silents to talkies moves him to tears. A century-spanning series of vignettes from numerous films follows. Realizing he had successfully achieved much of his dream, Manny smiles.
==Cast==
*Brad Pitt as Jack Conrad, a popular silent film star known for his flamboyant parties.
*Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy, an aspiring actress and Manny's love interest.
*Diego Calva as Manny Torres, a Mexican-American film assistant who aspires to have a larger role within the film industry.
*Jean Smart as Elinor St. John, a sensationalist journalist.
*Jovan Adepo as Sidney Palmer, a jazz trumpet player.
*Li Jun Li as Lady Fay Zhu, a Chinese-American cabaret singer who also writes intertitles for films.
*Olivia Hamilton as Ruth Adler, a director.
*P. J. Byrne as Max, Ruth's assistant director.
*Lukas Haas as George Munn, a film producer and Jack's friend.
*Max Minghella as Irving Thalberg, a studio executive.
*Rory Scovel as The Count, a film set drug dealer.
*Katherine Waterston as Estelle Conrad, a stage actress and Jack's third wife.
*Tobey Maguire as James McKay, a mob boss.
*Flea as Bob Levine, a studio executive.
*Jeff Garlin as Don Wallach, a studio executive.
*Eric Roberts as Robert Roy, Nellie's father.
*Ethan Suplee as Wilson, McKay's bodyguard.
*Samara Weaving as Constance Moore, a rival actress to Nellie.
*Olivia Wilde as Ina Conrad, Jack's ex-wife.
*Spike Jonze as Otto Von Strassberger, a German film director.
*Telvin Griffin as Reggie
*Chloe Fineman as Marion Davies
*Phoebe Tonkin as Jane Thornton
*Troy Metcalf as Orville Pickwick
*Jennifer Grant as Mildred Yates
*Patrick Fugit as Officer Elwood
*Pat Skipper as William Randolph Hearst
*Kaia Gerber as Starlet
*Cyrus Hobbi as Footballer
*Karen Bethzabe as Silvia Torres
*Sarah Ramos as Harriet Rothschild
*Alexandre Chen as James Wong Howe
*Taylor Hill as Rebecca
*John Mariano as Master of Ceremonies
*Mather Zickel as Distribution Executive
*Lewis Tan as Party Attendee
*Albert Hammond Jr. as Guest in Chicken Line
*Joe Dallesandro as Charlie the Photographer
==Production==
===Development===
It was announced in July 2019 that Damien Chazelle had set his next project, a period drama set in the golden age of Hollywood. Lionsgate was the frontrunner to acquire the project, with Emma Stone and Brad Pitt in the mix to star. In November, Paramount Pictures acquired worldwide rights to the project, with Stone and Pitt still circling roles. Pitt confirmed his involvement in January 2020, describing the film as being set when the silent film era transitioned into sound. He will play a character modeled on actor and director John Gilbert. In December 2020, Stone exited the film due to scheduling conflicts, with Margot Robbie now in early negotiations to replace her, and Li Jun Li was also cast. Robbie would be confirmed in March 2021, with Jovan Adepo and Diego Calva also joining. In June, Katherine Waterston, Max Minghella, Flea, Samara Weaving, Rory Scovel, Lukas Haas, Eric Roberts, P.J. Byrne, Damon Gupton, Olivia Wilde, Spike Jonze, Phoebe Tonkin and Tobey Maguire (who is also an executive producer for the film), joined the cast. In July 2021, Jean Smart joined the cast. In August 2021, Chloe Fineman, Jeff Garlin, Telvin Griffin and Troy Metcalf joined the cast of the film.
===Filming===
Filming was set to take place in California in mid-2020 after securing a state tax credit. However, it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and instead began filming on July 1, 2021. Filming wrapped on October 21, 2021.
==Themes and interpolations==
In an essay for /Film, Robert Daniels asserts that Babylon is essentially a story of identity and assimilation in early Hollywood. While noting the similarities it shares with films such as The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019), Bamboozled (2000), and Medicine for Melancholy (2008), Daniels focuses on character Manuel "Manny" Torres and his rise into the Hollywood studio system: "In the process, Manuel cuts off ties with his Mexican roots — though they live in Los Angeles, he never visits his family — he Americanizes his name to Manny, and at a party thrown by William Randolph Hearst, he presents himself as a Spaniard. Manuel becomes intoxicated by his proximity to the white capitalistic greed that governs Hollywood (and partly the American dream of upward mobility), causing him to traverse a tenuous betweenness of identity." Daniels writes that Manny's erasure of his identity is sparked by his fantasy romance with Nellie LaRoy — who represents what he loves about Hollywood: "An indefinable magical quality, upward mobility, picturesque happiness, and the ability to permanently define yourself." Daniels also adds that, whilst climbing the social ladder, Manny contributed to the mythology of Hollywood, recalling one scene where he expeditiously retrieved a camera for a large, destructive set and a picturesque scene is shot without future film audiences' knowledge of its production, and another scene where Manny pressures Black trumpeter Sidney Palmer to don Blackface during the filming of a Jazzshort, so that the lighting on the set doesn’t lighten his complexion in the final product.
Douglas Laman of Collider observed that Babylon functions as a rumination on how human beings try to outrun and ignore their innate mortality, pointing to the various nonchalant depictions of death (such as a newscaster casually talking about a Jack Conrad fangirl committing suicide) as an especially discernible example of this thematic element. Laman also pointed to a key scene in the middle of Babylon concerning Conrad briefly being overwhelmed by the death of his friend George Munn before returning to his default unflappable persona to be another key instance of the feature functioning as a tragic meditation on people trying to evade the inevitable presence of death.
==Marketing==
The first red-banded trailer for Babylon premiered on September 12, 2022, at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival during a Q&A event with Chazelle and TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey. It was released to the public the following day, alongside character posters of the main cast. Noting its uncensored nudity, profanity and drug use, several publications compared the trailer's atmosphere to that of films such as The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and The Great Gatsby (2013), which star Robbie and Maguire, respectively. A featurette about the making of the film was released on November 21, 2022. The second and final trailer for the film and its theatrical release poster were released on November 28, 2022.
As Maggie Dela Paz notes at ComingSoon.net, "a brand new behind-the scenes featurette ...highlight[ing] Chazelle’s ensemble cast of A-list stars and familiar supporting actors[, and] also featur[ing] commentary from the Oscar-nominated director as he talks about the challenge of handling this massive cast" was released on December 29, 2022.
==Release==
Babylon was first screened for critics and industry on November 14, 2022, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles and in New York City the following day. It was released on December 23, 2022. It was originally scheduled to have a limited release on December 25, 2022, followed by a wide release on January 6, 2023. The film was, before, scheduled for a December 25, 2021 limited release and a January 7, 2022, wide release, but was later delayed by an entire year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In October, the film was moved two days earlier to the current date and set for a solely wide release instead.
==Box office==
In the United States and Canada, Babylon was released alongside Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody, and was initially projected to gross $12–15 million from 3,342 theaters over its four-day opening weekend. The film made $1.5 million on its first day (including Thursday-night previews) and went on to debut to just $3.5 million in its opening weekend (and a total of $5.3 million over the four days), finishing fourth at the box office. Deadline cited mixed reception, the general public's declining interest in prestige films, the threat of a tripledemic surge in COVID-19 and flu cases, the nationwide impact of Winter Storm Elliott and the prior, more wider-appealing releases of Avatar: The Way of Water and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish as reasons for lower-than-expected theater attendance. The outlet also noted that with a combined production and promotion budget of around $160 million, Babylon will have to gross $250 million worldwide in order to break-even. In its sophomore weekend, the film made $2.6 million (a drop of 27.5%), finishing in fifth.
==Reception==
Babylon received mixed reviews from critics over it's excessive content, with overall reception being significantly more muted than Damien Chazelle's prior output. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 55% based on 258 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Babylon's overwhelming muchness is exhausting, but much like the industry it honors, its well-acted, well-crafted glitz and glamour can often be an effective distraction." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 61 out of 100, based on 59 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 74% of audience members gave the film a positive score, with 47% saying they would definitely recommend it.
==References==
==External links==
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Category:2022 films
Category:2022 American films
Category:2022 in film
Category:2022 black comedy films
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Category:2020s black comedy films
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Category:American black comedy films
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Category:Cultural depictions of Charlie Chaplin
Category:Films about Hollywood, Los Angeles
Category:Films directed by Damien Chazelle
Category:Films produced by Marc E. Platt
Category:Films starring Brad Pitt
Category:Films starring Margot Robbie
Category:Films starring Tobey Maguire
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Category:Films set in the 1920s
Category:Films about filmmaking
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Category:Films with screenplays by Damien Chazelle
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Category:Box Office Bombs
Category:Films over three hours long