Rent Babylon (2022)

Stunning - Babylon review by cr

In rare news i agree with your critic on this one. I was dreading this film as i had heard mixed reviews and its long run time but it really is worth your time.

Anyone interested in film making, early hollywood and the difficult change from silent films to talkies will like this. Margot robbie and brad pitt are great as we follow their characters fortunes through the 20's and beyond.

It is a landmark film with a fascinating story, great acting and an amazing jazz / swing soundtrack.

Highly recommended.

Good material swamped by tedium and toilet humour - Babylon review by Gwydion

If someone had been bold enough to cut this 3 hour 9 minutes epic down to a couple of hours, it might have made money rather than losing it.

Elephants shitting and women pissing on men are not what most viewers want. The minority who find it hilarious must have their own specialist stuff. Most mainstream films have the sense to avoid it. One wonders what happened here.

There is a lot of empty chat by people who have nothing interesting to say about the Meaning of Life.

Yet there is so much that is excellent. I don't regret having seen it. I just feel contempt for the editing process.

Certainly a rather curious movie, not like any other... - Babylon review by TB

I thought some aspects were excellent, other parts not so good.. I'm still not sure how I would rate it as a whole.. some people will probably hate it...

Let's have a look at some pluses and minuses...

Plus points -

Chaotic spectacle, with quite a few really OTT scenes

Not really like any movie I can think of, and self-indulgent

Albeit fictional story, there are some interesting historical elements (esp. going from the silent era to talkies)

Margot Robbie is great in it, perfectly cast

Looks fantastic, with some excellent editing (not all good though)

The last couple of minutes of the film are great (worth waiting for if you didn't enjoy the rest of the movie so much)

Minus points -

Chaotic spectacle, with quite a few really OTT scenes

Not really like any movie I can think of, and self-indulgent

Disjointed sprawling narrative (that didn't always work)

I felt that Brad Pitt was somewhat wasted in this; not bad, but not great either

Didn't really care about the characters - even one of the main protagonists, who's story arc is pretty much the backbone of the movie; but some scenes do still connect on an emotional level

Hard to rate with all the +/- so I'll give it 3 1/2 stars

Tour de Force - Babylon review by CD

It takes time to find any shape despite a lot of early action (I almost gave up after 20 mins) and is sometimes completely over the top,  but the film has fantastic energy and is a real treat for the senses.  Anybody who likes film will understand the emotion in the final scene.  Funny in parts and great performances from all the leads. 

Empty and meaningless spectacle without feeling or direction - Babylon review by RB

Every scene of this indulgent bloated film seems to have tried to outdo the previous one. It almost instantly loses touch with reality but the greater the madness the less the viewer cares. The acting is terrible, even from the A list actors too. Imagine a film riveted by an eight year old boy on coffee and sweets and you get close to this nonsense. 

Sadly, despite the efforts of everyone here, this just doesn't really work in any capacity - Babylon review by TB

Damien Chazelle has been an interesting & dynamic filmmaker. His works have looked at many different situations, although the element of perfectionism coupled with competition/high stakes has been a constant theme. At its best (La La Land,) he is a wonderful & powerful voice with a strong musical sensibility.

When it came to Babylon, the main reason I wanted to see it was, despite my liking for his previous work, actually a totally different reason. This film was advertised & billed as a totally uncensored, no-holds barred look at an extreme period in time. And then the awarding of its 18 rating confirmed this. However, as Babylon proves, Chazelle at his worst is scattershot & also not very good at making a compelling story, especially one 3 hours long, despite pretty much no limits being placed on him by the studios.

Babylon, in its most basic sense, looks at the journeys of multiple characters who are in 1920's Hollywood, showing their dreams, ambitions & failures. You have the up-and-coming starlet with big talent & herculean demons (Robbie,) the established film star who was massively successful but who's star is starting to wane (Pitt,) the young immigrant who is initially taken under Pitt's character's wing before surpassing him in terms of producing/directing (Calva) and an aspiring & talented musician making his way through musical pictures (Adepo.) Alongside this, there are also minor characters who the film attempts to follow and entwine in the story.

Writing that previous paragraph shows in many ways why, sadly, this film is almost a total misfire. In one sense, you have to admire its scope & determination to try to paint a large canvas looking at people of different colours and life experiences in the same situation. It opens with a nearly 30 minute orgy/party scene, full of great choreography & cinematography. But it just cannot keep that momentum going and despite spending a decent amount of time with the principle characters, you find yourself not caring & becoming bored.

It does have some good points & conversations, the most profound and hard hitting for me being, ironically for a film whose entire raison d'etre is total excess, a quiet but devastating conversation between Pitt's character & Elinor St. John, a veteran tabloid hack/gossip journalist about the trajectory that everyone in that time in Hollywood was going to experience in some way or another. There is also a wonderfully creepy cameo by a star from movies past, as the slimy, greasy & dispicible mob boss who one of the main characters gets caught up with.

There are also some profoundly sad & shocking moments, such as one of the characters having to visit a parent in a psychiatric hospital, the film perfectly capturing the juxtaposition of the immense success on the one hand, compared to the total destruction on the other, but also subtly showing just how messed up both of them are in their own different ways. There is also a toe-curlingly disgusting moment of racism towards one of the characters as well.

But those good/powerful points simply cannot outweigh the bad. The characters may have interesting moments, but they are also boring, vapid & fairly insignificant people in their own ways. You do find it hard to have much sympathy for their plights, some of which are totally self-inflicted, often repeatedly so. And this film is also unbelievably bloated in pretty much every way you can imagine.

I did want this film to be better, but this is another case of too much ambition meeting reality and crashing & burning. See it for a decent recreation of 20's Hollywood & not much else.

Overlong & Flawed Drama - Babylon review by GI

This exhausting tale of debauchery and corruption in 1920s and 30s Hollywood is certainly overcooked, overlong and far too much a pastiche that it lacks any real credibility. Don't get me wrong there are things to admire here but you have to wait for them in what seems an endlessly tedious film. The first and best thing is Margot Robbie as a young wannabe star in the silent age who rises to become one but is rendered emotionally damaged by the process. It's a bold and riveting performance so much so that when she's off screen you can't wait for her return. The second thing is some of the set pieces are intriguing even though the film is structured around a long series of such scenes. From the opening orgiastic party to a visit to a weird and depraved subterranean club you will perk up in the hope that something interesting is about to occur. But those individual scenes aside the film is deeply flawed in its presentation of a time and place so ludicrous that it almost feels cartoonish. The narrative is broadly about a series of persons who all live and work in the world of Hollywood movies and attempting to make the transition to sound. As I said Robbie is great as Nellie, a young woman destined to self destruction. Brad Pitt is the suave star who is on the decline and the linking character is Manny (Diego Calva) a Mexican eager to work in any role in the film business and who manages against the odds to rise and he's in love with Nellie, which will be his downfall. All these characters are loosely based on real persons or a conglomeration of them and some of the events are based on real ones but the biggest issue is the film feels a messy affair, somewhat incoherent and at times dull. It never seems to really nail the vile corruption of the place nor the real glitz of it either although it does try very hard. Overall it's a bold film and may indeed survive a future re-evaluation but I was not that impressed as I couldn't unravel what the film is trying to be.