Babylon: A "New to Streaming" Movie Review

 When I first signed up to be a cinema major, the very first movie my professor showed was the excrutiatingly baffling and boring art-house "documentary," Koyaanisqatsi. I asked my professor why in the world he'd start us out with such a difficult movie to sit through, and he replied that this was an intentional choice, to weed out the students who weren't actually serious about majoring in cinema, and who just thought watching movies for college credit might be easy and fun.

    I was repeatedly reminded of this conversation during the first hour or so of the epic-length film Babylon. Yes, there are many good aspects of the movie, both in general, and even in that first hour. But director/ writer Damien Chazelle fills that first hour with so much unpleasantness, at such a pace, in such a bombardment of the senses, for such a relentlessly long time, that he seems determined to weed out the people who thought that this just looked like a fun movie, and who aren't really serious about watching it.

    I guess I was really serious about watching it, because despite the multiple times during that hour I sincerely considered turning the movie off, I kept on going, and ended up grateful that I had. But that first hour: It's not bad. It's just challenging.

    After a brief prologue introducing one of the three main characters -- Mexican-American movie studio errand boy Manuel "Manny" Torres -- the movie devotes more than half an hour to an extended party scene set in the desert mansion of fictional movie executive Don Wallach (Jeff Garlin).

    Hollywood loves to depict wild parties, but I kid you not, you have never, ever seen a movie party anywhere nearly as wild as the one depicted here. Is it a costume party? A dance party? A sexual orgy? Are there drugs? Do fights break out? Is there an excess of alcohol, food, and nudity? Is an elephant brought into the room for no reason other than for the host to brag about adding an extra element of randomness? The answers to all of these questions are a resounding "yes, oh, god, YES!"

    Despite all of this bombarding our senses, Chazelle somehow manages to use this scene to introduce our four main characters: There's the already mentioned Manny, by far the lowest rung on this ladder, who, significantly, shows a flash of creative problem-solving when he's tasked with removing an OD'd actress's body from the house without drawing attention.

    There's Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), a celebrity so on top of his game that when he enters the room, every single person tries to demand his attention.

    There's Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a literal party-crasher who shows up uninvited, crashes her car into a statue in the driveway, and declares herself a star despite the fact that no one has heard of her. She befriends Manny, and later in the scene, finds a way to become the center of attention despite the many extreme distractions in the room.

    And there's Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), the highly talented, highly likable, level-headed jazz and swing musician who deftly instructs his band-mates how to remain calm and professional after they've been informed that a confused elephant is about to be running in their general direction.

    After an amusing but grueling half hour of all of this, Manny is assigned to take a still drunken Conrad home the next morning. Conrad and Manny become friends despite being on opposite ends of the Hollywood hierarchy, before Conrad, in the middle of a drunken monologue, falls out of his balcony and into his swimming pool and finally admits that maybe he should call it a day.

    And only then does the opening title show on the screen, and, already exhausted as viewers, we realize that everything we've watched so far is only the beginning.

    Is Chazelle finished exhausting and testing us? Not even close. The following extended sequence takes place on the studio backlot, where the four main characters are all working on different movies at the same time, in the same place. It's as chaotic as it sounds.

    The year is 1926, and silent film is at its height. The three main characters (Sidney is sort of a main character with his own storyline, but he is forgotten for large chunks of the film) are narrowed to Conrad, Manny, and Nellie. Conrad is initially at the height of his power and stardom, but struggles to maintain his relevance when Hollywood transitions to sound. Manny, by contrast, comes up with innovative ways to take advantage of this transition, and climbs the ladder from errand boy to script consultant to director/ producer/ executive status. For him, it's a gradual climb, but Nellie becomes the literal definition of an overnight success: She's spotted at the wild party at Wallach's mansion, assigned a relatively minor role in a film the next day, and her character gradually becomes more and more the focus of the film as the director becomes fascinated with Nellie's mastery of the technical side of performance. ("Can you cry just a little?" "Sure. You want one tear or two?")

    During the film's examination of these three careers, the movie finally slows down to a more tolerable pace, and we are rewarded. Conrad/ Pitt are established stars, while Manny / Diego Calva are not, but both Calva and Pitt deliver amazingly nuanced performances. When Chazelle manages to slow down long enough to just show us their faces as they're talking or even just thinking, Calva and Pitt are able to be funny and poignant in equal doses.

    Robbie's role is just as large but not quite as impressive. It's not the fault of either the acting nor the writing so much as the casting. The character is just too similar to some of Robbie's previous roles to really impress us, like watching Harley Quinn without the sadism. Don't get me wrong, Robbie is good in the role. But her character is so broad that she doesn't get to exercise the same nuance as Calva or Pitt.

    I don't know, man. That first hour is so determined to bombard our senses and depict almost nothing but pure chaos for so long, it's amazing that it gradually morphs into a movie that can make us get to know and feel for the characters. But it does.

    SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ THIS LAST PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE END OF THE MOVIE: The movie, rather confusingly, ends with a montage celebrating the history of cinema. The end of the movie takes place decades after the rest of the story, when Manny, now a family man with his Hollywood days long behind him, walks into a movie theater to watch Singing in the Rain. The movie he's watching transforms into a montage of different movies throughtout the decades, in a celebration of the history of cinema. This is confusing as hell. Is this supposed to be a vision Manny is having of the future? Sure, the bulk of the montage consists of silent film clips, but Manny, sitting in a 1950s theater, also sees scenes from Tron, Jurassic Park, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Why? The artistic choice is baffling.