Damien Chazelle’s ‘Babylon’ — One Year Later

The more risk-taking a film is, the more divided the reaction will be. Exactly a year ago, film critics were dunking on Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon”, they could not stand the excess — a 57 percent rotten score was undeserved.

And yet, almost no film in 2022 aimed higher than “Babylon.” That, in itself, should have earned this rousingly frenetic epic more respect.

“Babylon” starred Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, and Li Jun Li. The film chronicled the rise and fall of multiple characters during Hollywood's transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s.

“Babylon” tanked at the box-office, making $63 million against a production budget of $78–80 million. The film ultimately lost Paramount an estimated $87 million. Oddly enough, it was a huge hit in France, with both critics and audiences.

Chazelle shot “Babylon” like a madcap painter throwing tone and subtlety out of the window. He didn’t mold his movie as much as just splatter it with constantly surreal brush strokes. From scene-to-scene, there’s constant wonder at to what exactly it is that you’re watching: Drama? Comedy? Horror?

Don’t get me wrong, there are most definitely some flaws in this 188 minute film — the ending is still a puzzler — but there’s also incredibly realized moments. The film’s opening party, with an elephant, is a dazzler. The shoot of the silent epic, in the California dessert, is another brilliantly conceived treat.

Also, what’s the deal with Tobey Maguire’s character and the illicit dungeon? The scene is preceded by a direct reference to Lynch's “Lost Highway” — no coincidence then that Maguire looks like Robert Blake's Mephisto. The whole sequence feels like a descent into an underworld of hell.

“Babylon” is such a oddly conceived film. I can’t seem to put my finger on it, but there’s something to be said about a film that goes from gross-out humor to sheer Greek tragedy in the blink of an eye. The whole thing feels like a hallucination, a fever dream of total chaos.

It’s Chazelle’s dark odyssey through the last days of silent-era Hollywood where actors were being brushed aside for theatre-experienced performers in talkies. If Chazelle had a positive outlook on the industry in “La La Land,” he’s far less optimistic here — tackling the system, the politics, the money that fuels this machine. The characters here are all cogs in what will inevitably be a Hollywood that spits them out.

Forget about the critical snubbing, I do believe “Babylon” will stand the test of time. There is so much to this film, and it encompasses the kind of American filmmaking that might have been more celebrated just a few decades ago. A critical re-evaluation will most likely happen for “Babylon.”