It’s quite clear that Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” will be getting mixed reviews. After its L.A. screening last night, there’s a love-it/hate-it vibe going around this movie. It was to be expected, especially when the movie’s first shot is an elephant shitting on the camera lens.
Fact of the matter is that this definitely not winning Best Picture, it’s too divisive and lengthy. Anne Thompson seems to think it is very unlikely as well. From a friend who attended last night’s screening:
Can we have a law that there can be no more "love letters to cinema"? Demian Chazelle's BABYLON is three hours and eight minutes of cringe, from the opening in which an elephant torrentially shits into the camera lens, to the final recap of the history of cinema, in which Margot Robbie's image dissolves in a whirlpool of Stan Brakhage paint splatters--more torrential shit. The movie manages to reverse-engineer BOOGIE NIGHTS' schism of Seventies Film/Eighties Video Porn, dramatizing the move from silents to sound with nearly every BOOGIE story beat. Margot plays a half-baked mixture of Rollergirl and Amber Waves who snorts her way through the dawn of talkies. Brad Pitt, as a poor man's John Gilbert, struggles to remain relevant to the story. There's even a ripoff of BOOGIE's legendary firecracker sequence, with Tobey Maguire as a pale shade of Alfred Molina in a Lynchian nightmare that's greeted with groans. The general air of frenzied megalomania makes this a perfect finale to a triple bill with WHITE NOISE and BARDO. Chazelle should have learned one thing from early talkies: never go a whisker past 76 minutes, tops!
First off, the POSITIVE reactions:
Anne Thompson: Damien Chazelle wanted to make a film set during the druggy, decadent transition from silents to sound. He created characters (played by Diego Calvo, Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt) to follow that trajectory. Shot 180 pages of script at about a minute per page. Babylon is great fun.
Jeff Nelson: Babylon is a daring Hollywood epic that utterly shocks the senses. Margot Robbie and Diego Calva give huge performances. Damien Chazelle incorporates his signature musicality and movement throughout. Justin Hurwitz’s score is one hell of a wall of sound.
Kevin Polowy: A coked-up Margot Robbie projectile vomiting all over the face of a stuffy old man in a tux pretty much sums up the chaotic energy and glorious messiness of BABYLON, truly the strangest, most debaucherous love letter to Hollywood ever.
Ernest Owens: #BabylonMovie is definitely going to polarize #FilmTwitter. People are either going to obsess over it and praise it for dear life or say it's a much of noise. I'm on the former end, but still -- it's gonna be fun watching people go to bat on either side.
Jim Hemphill: Chazelle’s BABYLON is DAY OF THE LOCUST crossed with WOLF OF WALL STREET and SINGIN IN THE RAIN with BOOGIE NIGHTS as its structural template (with Tobey Maguire in the Alfred Molina position!). In other words, I adored all 180-plus minutes of it.
Yolanda Machado: Babylon is A LOT of movie - a purposeful mess, a journey more than a film that feels every bit as much a the town it encompasses. There is a storyline I'm questioning... but Margot Robbie and Diego Calva are and the music!!! Oomph, the music and visuals are !!!
Perri Nemiroff: #Babylon has some incredibly strong sequences — especially the ones focused on Margot Robbie’s character — but overall lacked focus & couldn’t support so many key characters. Lots of interesting ideas in there but the manic visuals & story structure work for some and not others.
Steven Weintraub: I got lost in #babylonmovie in a good way. Love seeing movies that I’m not sure where it’s going next. And Diego Calva was fantastic and is going to book a lot of roles after this movie.
Then we have the NEGATIVE reactions:
Clayton Davis: #Babylon feels like if someone read Damien Chazelle the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and then he said, "hold my beer!" High octane, cocaine-inducing trip. First half is great. Likely the internet's new favorite movie of all-time. Margot Robbie and Justin Hurwitz are your stars.
Eric Weber: I have some really — really — bad news to share with you, #Babylon’s a flaming hot mess, a tonal disaster, easily Damien Chazelle’s worst film & one of the worst films of 2022
Ryan Swen: BABYLON is Truly monstrous in its thudding insistence on shoving the viewer’s face in the muck and claiming it’s something novel or moving; Chazelle might be the most confident director in Hollywood today, of course he’s also got some of the worst instincts out there.
Scott Menzel: Babylon is an ambitious mess of a film. I don’t even know where to begin with this one but the tone is all over the place. Margot Robbie tries but the script fails her. A love letter to cinema that made me hate cinema.
Gregroy Elwood: Babylon is a fever dream of a movie that’s best when it’s being a straight out comedy. The drama barely plays. Pitt and Jovan Adepo give the best performances in the movie. Robbie gives it her all but the character is so one note. Didn’t love it.
Joshua Rothkopf: Damien Chazelle brings buckets of energy to BABYLON, but it’s never not pounding and obvious and, finally, uninsightful. Everything about it is borrowed — even down to Tobey Maguire stealing the film as its Alfred Molina. A Scorsese coke film by a squeaky clean director.
Joe Utichi: Thanks to Damien Chazelle for the existential crisis: I no longer like movies as a concept, and not for the reasons he imagines. Also, Babylon isn't a love letter to Hollywood. It's a drunken, late-night, dirty sext to Hollywood that'd be better off canceled.
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