Babylon (2022)

Title:  Babylon

Year: 2022

Genre: Comedy | Drama  | History |

Runtime: 189 min

Director: Damien Chazelle

Starring:  Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, Tobey Maguire

7.4/10

Once Babylon was announced as a film going into production, I had one eye open, peeking at the production. Having high hopes might be a tad discrediting but it was an anticipating film. Much because of the historic plot that peak my interest. It’s fictional, but far too few modern features have gained interest in this area about this specific film period. With Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, and Tobey Maguire among the cast, one hoping for a fun trip.

It wasn’t just fun, it was both fun and weird. It’s entertaining but not a good entertaining aspect of the whole concept. If an elephant takes shit, it’s never stopped with the shitting, or a character throwing up, you will see it and feel it, even to the spectator’s dismay.

The first two hours feel somewhat acceptable. You might call it tolerable. There’s profanity, violence, and R-rated stuff that hit you in the gut. Robbie and Pitt give good performances but nothing outstanding. Pitt playing an old actor, losing his glamour days is far too meta. Robbie, who is playing Nellie LaRoy doesn’t feel like an honest character, and her journey between celebrity and poverty undermines the potential of the story. Once the drug deal goes awry, it becomes another Hollywood-esque escaping the villains.

Diego Calva’s Manny Torres, a character that tries to be brother good and morality, is annoying like everything else. Everything in the film feels dishonest, a mocking of the film industry with its lazy writing and the abomination for which Damien Chazelle has taken. With a runtime of over three hours, it’s obvious as well that it wasn’t easy for the director to make the choice to kill your darlings. Alas, the point when Manny meets the barrel of a gun and pleads for his life when everyone else is dead, is pointless. Why a criminal wouldn’t kill him when he wet himself and cries, feels like another weak plot point of the film. The film needed an ending and used one of the most seen plot tools made.

The jokes hit wrong, the writing doesn’t stick to its landing, and the music isn’t that noticeable. For a director that made Whiplash, is this a disconnected director who has lost his way with reality too fast, and the travesty seems to never end with this man? A lot of weird stuff happens in Babylon but there’s no concrete substance behind the scenes. The character feels in the end flat and disoriented in his pale drug-sex-abused -fantasy world. Not to mention the obsession with jazz in his every movie that doesn’t make sense or fills a point for the story. It’s a prolonged film with too much happening without a point.