Rating: R
Runtime: 3 hours, 9 minutes
Director: Damien Chazelle
Quick Impressions:
The kids and I just read A Christmas Carol aloud together, and now, taking a page from Ebenezer Scrooge, I’m making a crazed, eleventh-hour scramble to catch up on all the movies I need to see before Oscar nominations are announced. (It’s so easy these days. Most movies come to Austin. Everything streams immediately. The Oscars aren’t until March again! Surely, I can catch up. And bingeing complete sets in manic desperation is my favorite mode of being.)
I had been thinking, Why do I even go to movies and write reviews? It’s a waste of time and produces nothing. But now I’ve remembered, Oh right! It’s because I love movies. Surely I won’t remain the polar opposite of my usual Johnny Five from Short Circuit personality indefinitely. (Right?)
Last night, we finally watched Everything Everywhere All at Once. I’ve wanted to see it since it came out, but too much socializing sent me into overload and shutdown. (My husband once astutely observed, “Sarah can do anything, but she can’t do anything else.” I’m working hard to rotate my activities. It’s tricky for me. I have laser focus, but that’s sometimes a disadvantage.) I’m a huge fan of Crazy, Rich Asians, (the books and the movie. The film was my favorite romcom in at least a decade, and that the books are a different genre than the movie was a delightful surprise). I wanted Michelle Yeoh to get an Oscar nomination for that so badly, so I’m thrilled to see her in another project getting so much buzz. Plus the career resurrection of Key Huy Quan is so cool and gratifying. And we spent August watching classic horror movies and shows, so I’ve been thinking about Jamie Lee Curtis more than average lately, too. I have a lot to say about Everything Everywhere All at Once, but it’s been out so long I’ll save my thoughts for an Oscar nominees write up when the time comes. My daughter could not stop sobbing. She loved it. I declared, “This is the best movie I’ve seen all year.”
And that lasted for one day because now I like Babylon more.
I knew nothing about this movie until yesterday. Even on the drive to the theater, my husband asked me, “What’s this about?”
And I had to answer, “It’s Damien Chazelle’s movie. Margot Robbie is in it. There’s an elephant. Leonardo DiCaprio may be in it, but he’s probably not. It seems like some male actor is…” (I’ve followed Oscar contenders since I was a child. I don’t know what is going on with me!)
Regardless, Damien Chazelle’s name is enough to get me to the movie. I’ll find out what it’s about when I’m there. I liked La La Land (perhaps the concept a bit better than the movie), but I loved Whiplash. It was my favorite film that year by a landslide. I loved it so much that I will watch any movie Chazelle ever makes.
Margot Robbie’s name will also get me to a movie. (I feel like this should be a higher compliment. Saying, “Hey, Sarah, want to go to a movie?” will also get me to any movie, especially if there’s popcorn). But I am a Margot Robbie fan. She does consistently interesting work. (I also like elephants.)
When I was on Jeopardy!, one of the contestant coordinators at the time asked me, “Who’s someone you admire?” before my fifth game (because I was already running out of anecdotes). And I was like, “Someone living?” I could only think of dead people and finally blundered, “Margot Robbie?” (I’m not really sure why I landed on her. Maybe because she was in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Bombshell that Oscar season, and it was February when I taped, so I’d just blogged about all the Oscar movies.) Then after lunch, he casually said, “So I told Alex you’re the president of the Margot Robbie Fan Club.” And I was like, “You did???” (He didn’t really, though. But it’s funny to think how close I came to being president of a fictitious Margot Robbie Fan Club on national TV. I was fully prepared to start one if necessary.)
The Good:
Babylon is about early Hollywood, the awkward transition from silent pictures to talkies. It’s like Singin’ in the Rain (which it references and incorporates very liberally) except with more tragedy and orgies. (The metadrama lover in me is gleefully bewildered to see a movie on this topic incorporate the 1952 film Singin’ in the Rain as part of film history. Hollywood’s an endless self-referential cycle—as previously seen in Singin’ in the Rain and seen again in this. Several decades from now, I suppose we’ll get another film on this topic that incorporates Babylon.) (When the movie shows us Debbie Reynolds, it felt eerie to me, but it’s just a coincidence I chose to see Babylon the day after the anniversary of her death.)
I love stuff about old Hollywood. My family was obsessed with classic movies (probably because I hung out with my grandparents a lot, and they were born in 1918. They just liked movies). I used to read about early Hollywood as a child (and sometimes as an adult). So just by good luck, I am interested in the subject of the film I did not research at all.
What I loved particularly about Babylon is how thoroughly engaging and weirdly surprising it is. I began watching the film and thought, “I wish I could go to this party. Life is exhausting. I keep getting overwhelm freeze. This party would be such a carnivalesque onslaught to the senses that it would numb you as effectively as any drug.” It reminded me a bit of the party at the beginning of the film The Great Beauty.
So initially, I was watching, really into it (and so curious about the elephant), thinking, “I have got to get an invitation to a party like this. Why else am I even alive? What am I doing not going to this party?”
But then before the scene was even over, I pivoted to, “This is the most horrible party I could ever imagine.” I just wrote a novel that involves a party, and I’ve been worried, thinking, Can I write fiction for adults? Maybe I’m not really an adult. Maybe my fiction is too full of profanity, too objectionable, and obscene, so it reads as silly. Then watching this party, I thought, Oh my God, I’m not profane, objectionable, and obscene enough to pass myself off as an adult. I hang around with children too much. I don’t pee on strangers enough. I’m not doing enough cocaine. I’m just not putting myself out there enough at orgies…I don’t know how to write for grown-ups at all.
And then I was like, I hate this party. It makes me want to throw up my soul. I would rather be anywhere than at this party. And I hate this movie, too. This is just going to be La La Land starring Harley Quinn without make-up doing more cocaine.
And then five minutes later, I thought, This is the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life!
The segment of the film that takes place the next day on the two movie sets is (as Brad Pitt’s character promises) magical. This portion of the film is so hilarious, rewarding, gratifying, energized. It’s just fantastic. Honestly, it even improved my self esteem as I realized, Okay, so these people are clearly making wonderful movies. It doesn’t matter one bit at all that they were up all night at the elephant orgy. (I feel so guilty for being naturally nocturnal. I work better after midnight. I also feel guilty for being all the other ways I am. But I do feel that as long as you can produce something of quality, none of this matters.) Constant chaos created by situational pressure is great because you never have to stop and contemplate, but you can’t write novels in that frame of mind, sadly. I do think it would be wonderful to commandeer an ambulance the way Diego Calva’s Manny Torres does. What an adventure! This sort of life appeals to me, but unfortunately, we’re all only permitted to live one life at a time. (I’m running out of time in the one I have. Writing takes forever!)
I don’t know anything about music, but both my husband and I liked Justin Hurwitz’s score. Possibly I am making this up because I know Chazelle is so interested in music, but I think the film unfolds like a piece of music, like a symphony in movements. I don’t have the musical background to say this is the case, but it felt like that to me, watching. Every section of the film has a different mood and tempo, and they build into one artwork, more by mood than narrative. (I would have to see the film again and do some research before I could argue these impressions of mine coherently.)
The performances are all good. (Some extremely surprising people show up in the supporting cast. Olivia Wilde shows up just to get divorced. Jennifer Grant is in the movie!) The characters are compelling, and several seem worthy of Oscar nominations to me—Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, possibly even Jean Smart (because of one wonderful monologue). Tobey Maguire deserves an award just for looking improbably creepy. (It’s not his countenance. It’s his energy.) This is honestly the best Maguire performance I’ve seen in a long time. He reminds me of when Michael Cera shows up as himself in This is the End, except he’s for real. He’s not just a joke. He’s playing this chillingly creepy, utterly depraved person. (Perhaps the greatest surprise of the entire film are those droplets of water from above. I was convinced that he knew from the start what was in that bag. The way that actually plays out is a thousand times more unnerving.) (No wonder I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was in this. Brat Pitt and Margot Robbie star, and then Tobey Maguire randomly shows up. It seems like he should be in it.)
Jovan Adepo gets one extremely powerful, heart-breaking scene, and Li Jun Li gets a fantastic moment in the snake fighting scene.
Best Action Sequence:
One thing I love about Babylon is how casually people die. There’s one death that’s set up for us at the start of a scene. You watch the entire scene thinking, “That guy is going to die.” (Now that I’ve told you a guy dies, I can’t reveal which scene I’m talking about.) But it’s one of my favorite scenes in the film, especially because it’s capped by that promised death. It seems much more realistic than a similar scene in Singin’ in the Rain. It makes me wish I made movies. I don’t have any of the skills necessary, but I could die.
Since I now can’t talk about that scene, I will mention Maguire’s flourish at the end. I love the way this “party” and the party at the beginning almost bookend the story. Rory Scovel is so funny here. His line about Maguire and his friends being no worse than movie people is so untrue. The party scene at the beginning has many off-putting, morally repugnant elements, but overall, it looks pretty fun and like something most guests are doing to unwind. Maguire’s “party” is so terribly, terribly horrible. I’d like to see the movie another time to consider the relationship between these two parties.
Best Scene Visually:
The fighting a snake scene is just something else. It’s going to be hard to forget the image of someone running around enfanged. Similarly memorable is Margot Robbie enjoying the ice sculpture (really just because Jeff Garlin’s line is funny. For some reason, it makes me think of the movie The Counselor.) I like the way Babylon forces us to think about what’s real, what’s make believe, what’s comedy, what’s tragedy.
Best Scene:
It isn’t one scene, but I love the entire section of Babylon that shows the chaotic day of filming the characters experience the morning after the party. This is particularly good because after we see the initial party scene, plus the way Manny is treated, when Pitt’s character insists that making movies is magical, we have a hard time believing him. But it’s true. (And its fun to watch Olivia Hamilton get excited about Margot Robbie crying one tear on demand.)
Most Oscar Worthy moment, Brad Pitt/Jean Smart:
Pitt’s character is my favorite. I love Jack Conrad. He’s very likeable. He does everything with such intentionality even though he never knows what’s going on. I’m impressed by how he never allows anything to disturb his equanimity. (The way he goes to bed is quite memorable. The fact that he sees no reason to move his tent is just amazing. The way he chooses wives and navigates his marriages is just…baffling but weirdly endearing.)
I was horrified to see the character seek out Jean Smart’s Elinor St. John. I kept thinking, Why are you talking to this depressed writer who keeps saying she knew Proust? She is your kryptonite. Why are you listening to her?
The monologue Smart has here is captivating and full of truth. But these are the kinds of truths you shouldn’t dwell on. She is the wrong person to give him a pep talk. This is the exact opposite of what he needs to hear. His life is working fine. Good thing Shirley Temple didn’t go chat with her.
I also find her character extremely dishonest. What she says to him sounds profound, and yes, there’s truth in it, but it’s like the way the devil tells you the truth. It is blatantly untrue that what she writes has no effect on his career. I feel it takes a lot of nerve to act as if you’re just writing little reflections on objective reality when you’re a professional gossip columnist with her level of influence and access.
I wanted to yell at the screen, “Don’t you listen to her, Jack Conrad. You are right. There is value in what you do.” Oh they laughed at you? Consider becoming a comedian. Or better yet, hire a publicist.
I find his conversation with the bellhop quite moving and revealing.
I do wish my mother were alive so I could tell her, “One thing that’s happened since you died is that Jean Smart is suddenly winning awards constantly and appearing in Oscar caliber movies.”
Most Oscar Worthy moment, Margot Robbie:
I find Robbie’s scene at the party where she’s trying to change her image so relatable. I completely understood and felt her anguish and frustration here. The character’s behavior is so off-putting. Clearly she’s her own worst enemy. And yet the actress makes her really sympathetic.
Most Oscar Worthy moment, Diego Calva:
Calva gives the type of performance that builds. Its excellence is not necessarily shown in a single moment, though his mounting anxiety and terror in the part with Tobey Maguire adds to the unsettling intensity of those scenes.
The Negatives:
Margot Robbie has a line late in the film, something like, “I don’t think I’m good for you,” and I was like, “Yes, I don’t think so, either.” Why is Manny so desperately in love with her? It motivates all of his actions for years. I assume she’s a metaphor for Hollywood itself. But this idea that a magical, unpredictable woman sweeps in from out of nowhere and drives someone’s entire life seems a bit cliché. (Of course, I would probably behave exactly the way Manny does, but that doesn’t make it less of a cliché.)
The movie is a bit of an unwieldy, epic mess, but that’s the point, isn’t it? I don’t think Babylon could achieve the statement it’s trying to make without being three hours long and displaying grandeur, debauchery, hope, and despair.
The one scene that didn’t quite work for me is the “epilepsy warning” part. (There was a sign up as we entered the auditorium.) That portion took me out of the moment. I thought, “Is this what we’re going to beam out to the aliens?”) It’s supposed to be the most profound part of the film (I assume), but I found the scene when Jack Conrad talks to the bellboy more compelling. Also effective is the moment when Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy walks off into the darkness. I think that by the time Manny watches Singin’ in the Rain, the movie has already effectively shown us what the character is discovering. This ending feels tacked on and superfluous to me. I guess we have to see it to drive home the speech that Jean Smart delivers to Brad Pitt. But do we? The very ending of the movie didn’t work as well for me as all the rest. For most of the film, meaning and magic seem to arise organically and inexplicably from the filmmaking process and the chaos of life. The ending feels a bit…tacked on, too neat. Like you’ve already shown us. Do we have to watch you show him? I don’t understand why we do. But I might feel differently on a second viewing. My daughter already wants to see this. Given her interest in film, I’m going to let her. She’s about to turn fourteen. If you’re thinking of showing Babylon to someone that age, make sure to watch it yourself first. There will have to be strategic eye-closing (either by your child or you).
Everything Everywhere All at Once is possibly the superior film, but there’s a beautiful chaos to this one that really spoke to me. They’re both excellent. This one is sure to appeal to fewer people (or at least to be despised by some).
Overall:
Babylon may be my favorite film of the year so far, thanks more to some of its parts than the sum of them. The performances are excellent, and the movie is a fun, thought-provoking watch. I have no idea if anyone else will like it, but I do.