Babylon is a 2022 American epic period tragicomedy film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It features an ensemble cast that includes Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, and Li Jun Li. It chronicles the rise and fall of many characters during Hollywood's change from silent to sound films in the late 1920s.
Chazelle began developing Babylon in July 2019, with Lionsgate Films as the frontrunner to acquire the project. It was announced that Paramount Pictures had acquired worldwide rights in November 2019. Much of the main cast joined the project between January 2020 and August 2021, and filming took place in Los Angeles from July to October 2021.
Babylon premiered at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles on November 14, 2022, and was released in the United States on December 23, 2022. It was met with a polarized response from critics upon release and was a box-office bomb, grossing $65 million against a production budget of $78–80 million and losing Paramount $87 million. It received five nominations at the 80th Golden Globe Awards (including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, winning Best Original Score), three nominations at the 76th British Academy Film Awards (winning Best Production Design) and three nominations at the 95th Academy Awards. In later years, the film is said to have developed a cult following.
Plot
In 1926 Bel Air, Mexican immigrant Manuel "Manny" Torres helps transport an elephant to a bacchanal at the mansion of his employer, Kinoscope Studios boss Don Wallach. Amidst the libertine event rife with sex, jazz, and cocaine, Manny becomes infatuated with Nellie LaRoy, a wide-eyed, hedonistic "star" from New Jersey. They bond over their shared desires of becoming big-name players in Hollywood. Also attending are Chinese American lesbian cabaret-singer Lady Fay Zhu, African American jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer, and oft-married silent film star Jack Conrad.
Afterwards, Manny helps carry away young actress Jane Thornton, who overdosed on drugs while engaging in urolagnia with another actor, by having the elephant walk through to distract partygoers. The flamboyantly-dancing Nellie is spotted and swiftly recruited to replace Jane in a Kinoscope film. Manny escorts Jack home in the morning, and he decides to hire Manny as his assistant. While filming the next day, Nellie impresses with her natural acting ability and upstages the actor-producer, while Manny provides an urgently-needed camera in time to shoot Jack's scenes at golden hour. In the aftermath, Nellie becomes an "it girl" covered by gossip columnist Elinor St. John, who also follows Jack's career, while Manny makes industry connections.
Jack has Manny attend the premiere of The Jazz Singer in New York City to gauge the reaction to sound film. There, he reunites with Nellie, who introduces him to her institutionalized mother, and they agree to keep in touch when returning home. Despite their attempts and Manny’s assistance, Jack and Nellie both struggle to navigate sound film’s demands, with Jack relegated to smaller ensemble roles such as The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Nellie copes by increasing her drug use and gambling, tarnishing her reputation. At one point, after overhearing gossip about her, she eggs on her father and inept business manager Robert to fight a rattlesnake at a party; inebriated, he instead passes out. Nellie fights the snake, which bites her neck; Fay kills it and sucks out the venom. Nellie passionately kisses her, fueling rumors of a romantic relationship between them.
Manny pitches films starring Sidney's orchestra and becomes a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio executive under Irving Thalberg. As the Hays Code goes into effect, executives order Manny to fire Fay, a Kinoscope title-writer, due to her rumors with Nellie. Further, they have Manny insist to the comparatively light-skinned Sidney that he don blackface to assuage Southern audiences' aversion to interracial people; humiliated, Sidney leaves Kinoscope once filming wraps. With Elinor and Thalberg’s help, Manny tries to save Nellie’s career by revamping her image for high society; upset at being repressed from her partying lifestyle, she has a breakdown against upper-class snobbery at a party hosted by William Randolph Hearst.
By 1932, Jack finds larger work in critically-panned MGM films. However, he falls into a depression after learning his longtime friend/producer, George Munn, has committed suicide following repeated heartbreak. Jack confronts Elinor over her story on his declining popularity; she explains that his star has faded, but he will be immortalized on film. Distraught, Jack encounters Fay at a hotel party where she reveals her departure for Pathé in Europe; he then returns to his hotel room and commits suicide.
Eccentric gangster James McKay threatens Nellie over her gambling debts. Hiding her at his house, Manny secures funds from movie-set drug-pusher "The Count", and visits James with him to pay the debts. Manny panics upon learning that it is prop money. While dragging them through a subterranean gathering space for depraved zoosadist parties, James discovers the ruse, and Manny and the Count barely escape and kill Wilson, James’s henchman in the process.
To escape James, Manny asks Nellie to flee with him to Mexico, marry and start a new life; she eventually agrees. While Manny gathers their belongings, Nellie reneges on her decision, dancing away into the night. James's associate finds Manny, killing the Count and his roommate. When a terrified Manny wets himself, the hitman pities and spares him on the condition he leaves Los Angeles.
Sidney finds happiness again by playing at black establishments, while newspaper clippings reveals Elinor's and Nellie's deaths, the latter from an overdose alone in her apartment. In 1952, Manny returns to California with his wife Silvia and young daughter, having fled to New York City and established a radio shop. After showing them the Kinoscope Studios entrance, he visits a nearby cinema alone to see Singin' in the Rain, whose depiction of the industry's transition from silents to talkies piques his interest. He is then moved to tears as he transcendently witnesses films from the past, present, and future.
Cast
J.C. Currais cameos as the truck driver during the film's opening scene. Mike Manning makes an uncredited appearance as a "New York fan." Damien Chazelle "voice cameos" as partygoers outside the bathroom Nellie hides in at one point in the film.
Production Development
It was announced in July 2019 that Damien Chazelle had set his next project following First Man (2018) as a period drama set in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Lionsgate Films was the frontrunner to acquire the project after distributing Chazelle's La La Land (2016), with Emma Stone (also having worked on La La Land) and Brad Pitt in the mix to star. In November, Paramount Pictures acquired worldwide rights to the project, with Stone and Pitt still circling roles. Pitt confirmed his involvement in January 2020, describing the film as being set when the silent film era transitioned into sound. He was set to play a character modeled on actor-director John Gilbert.
By December 2020, Margot Robbie was in early negotiations to replace Stone, who exited the film due to scheduling conflicts, and Li Jun Li was also cast. Robbie was confirmed in March 2021, with Jovan Adepo and Diego Calva also joining.
In June, Katherine Waterston, Max Minghella, Flea, Samara Weaving, Rory Scovel, Lukas Haas, Eric Roberts, P.J. Byrne, Damon Gupton, Olivia Wilde, Spike Jonze, Phoebe Tonkin, and Tobey Maguire (who is also an executive producer on the film) joined the cast. In July, Jean Smart joined the cast, with Chloe Fineman, Jeff Garlin, Telvin Griffin, and Troy Metcalf joining the cast the following month.
Filming Filming was originally set to take place in California in mid-2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It began on July 1, 2021, and wrapped on October 21, 2021. Shea's Castle was used for the exterior shots of the mansion in the opening party scene, and interiors were shot inside the Ace Hotel Los Angeles. The movie ranch, Blue Sky Ranch, served as Kinescope Studios.
Music
Justin Hurwitz, a frequent collaborator of Chazelle, composed the film's score. Two tracks from the score, "Call Me Manny" and "Voodoo Mama," were released digitally on November 10, 2022, the latter track being used to underscore the film's first trailer. The soundtrack album was released by Interscope Records on December 9, 2022.
Thematic analysis In an essay for /Film, Robert Daniels asserts that Babylon is essentially a story of identity and assimilation in early Hollywood. While noting the similarities it shares with films such as The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019), Bamboozled (2000), and Medicine for Melancholy (2008), Daniels focuses on character Manuel "Manny" Torres and his rise into the Hollywood studio system: "In the process, Manuel cuts off ties with his Mexican roots—though they live in Los Angeles, he never visits his family—he Americanizes his name to Manny, and at a party thrown by William Randolph Hearst, he presents himself as a Spaniard. Manuel becomes intoxicated by his proximity to the white capitalistic greed that governs Hollywood (and partly the American dream of upward mobility), causing him to traverse a tenuous betweenness of identity." Daniels writes that Manny's erasure of his identity is sparked by his fantasy romance with Nellie LaRoy—who represents what he loves about Hollywood: "An indefinable magical quality, upward mobility, picturesque happiness, and the ability to permanently define yourself." Daniels also adds that, while climbing the social ladder, Manny contributed to the mythology of Hollywood, recalling one scene where he expeditiously retrieved a camera for a large, destructive set and a picturesque scene is shot without future film audiences' knowledge of its production, and another scene where Manny pressures Black trumpeter Sidney Palmer to don blackface during the filming of a jazz short, so that the lighting on the set doesn't lighten his complexion in the final product.
Lisa Laman of Collider observed that Babylon functions as a rumination on how human beings try to outrun and ignore their innate mortality, pointing to the various nonchalant depictions of death (such as a newscaster's casual account of the suicide of a female Jack Conrad fan) as an especially discernible example of this thematic element. Laman also pointed to a key scene in the middle of Babylon concerning Conrad briefly being overwhelmed by the death of his friend George Munn before returning to his default unflappable persona to be another key instance of the feature functioning as a tragic meditation on people trying to evade the inevitable presence of death.
Release Theatrical Babylon was first screened for critics and industry people on November 14, 2022, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles and in New York City the following day. It was released on December 23, 2022. The film was initially scheduled for a December 25, 2021, limited release and a January 7, 2022, wide release, but was later delayed by an entire year, with a December 25, 2022, limited release, and a January 6, 2023, wide release, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In October, the film was moved two days earlier to the current date and set for a solely wide release instead.
Home media The film was released on VOD platforms on January 31, 2023, and on Paramount+ on February 21, 2023. It was released on Blu-ray, DVD and 4K UHD a month later on March 21, 2023.
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