Babylon (2022 Film)

''Babylon'' is a 2022 American epic historical black comedy 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 polarising response from critics and was a box-office bomb, grossing $63 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.

Plot

In Bel Air, 1926, Mexican immigrant Manuel "Manny" Torres helps transport an elephant to a bacchanal at the mansion of his employer, Kinoscope Studios boss Don Wallach. Witnessing this event rife with sex, jazz, and cocaine, Manny becomes smitten with Nellie LaRoy, a brash, ambitious self-declared "star" from New Jersey. Manny, the son of impoverished Mexican refugees, shares his dream with her—to be part of something "bigger". He helps carry away young actress Jane Thornton, who overdosed on drugs with actor Orville Pickwick, having the elephant walk through to distract partygoers.

Also attending are Chinese-American gay cabaret-singer Lady Fay Zhu and African-American jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer. The flamboyantly-dancing Nellie is spotted and swiftly recruited to replace Jane in a Kinoscope film. During filming, she crudely upstages Constance Moore. Manny becomes a personal assistant to the benevolent, oft-married film star Jack Conrad, who helps him secure Kinoscope assistant jobs. When a camera is urgently needed for one of Jack's scenes, Manny procures it at the last moment, helping him climb the studio system's ranks.

Nellie becomes an "it girl" covered by gossip columnist Elinor St. John, who also follows Jack's career. As sound film displaces silents in the late-1920s, Manny skillfully adapts. At Sidney's suggestion, he pitches films starring Sidney's orchestra to Irving Thalberg and becomes a studio executive. Nellie struggles to navigate sound film's demands (one cameraman dies filming her), and increases her drug use and gambling, tarnishing her reputation, despite Manny's assistance.

Nellie, shown to have an institutionalized mother, eggs on her drunken father (and inept business manager) Robert to fight a rattlesnake at a party; he passes out. Nellie fights the snake, which bites her neck; Fay kills it and sucks out the venom. Nellie passionately kisses her.

By 1932, Jack's popularity is waning but he still finds work in low-budget Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films. As Hollywood's audience becomes less tolerant of libertine behavior, executives order Manny to fire Fay, a Kinoscope title-writer, because she is lesbian. While practicing lines with new wife Estelle, Jack is devastated to learn his longtime friend/producer, George Munn, has committed suicide.

Elinor and Manny try to revamp Nellie's image and get her into high society, but Nellie lashes out against upper-class snobbery at a party, demonstratively vomiting on William Randolph Hearst. Jack confronts Elinor over her cover story on his declining popularity; she explains that his star has faded, but he will be immortalized on film.

Comparatively light-skinned Sidney is offended when studio executives insist he don blackface to assuage Southern audiences' aversion to interracial orchestras; he leaves Kinoscope to perform live in black establishments. Jack encounters Fay at a hotel party; she reveals her departure for Europe and Pathé. After returning to his hotel room, a despondent Jack shoots himself dead.

Eccentric gangster James McKay threatens Nellie's life over her gambling debts. Manny rejects her pleas for help, but later secures funds from the movie-set drug-pusher/aspiring actor "The Count", and visits James with him to pay the debts. Manny panics upon learning the money is counterfeit, made by his prop-maker. Raving about potential film ideas, the gangster drags them along to a subterranean gathering space for depraved zoosadist parties. When he realizes the cash is counterfeit, the two are nearly shot but escape, killing James's henchman Wilson.

Manny asks Nellie to flee with him to Mexico, marry and start a new life; she eventually agrees. James's associate finds Manny, killing The Count and his roommate. When a terrified Manny loses control of his bladder, the hitman spares him on condition he leaves Los Angeles. While Manny gathers their belongings, Nellie reneges on her decision, dancing away into the night. A montage of newspaper clippings reveals Elinor's death at 76 and Nellie's death from a drug overdose at 34.

In 1952, Manny returns to California with his wife Silvia and young daughter, having fled to New York City and established a radio shop. He shows them the Kinoscope Studios entrance, then visits a nearby cinema alone to see ''Singin' in the Rain'', whose depiction of the industry's transition from silents to talkies, albeit sanitized, moves him to tears. A century-spanning series of vignettes from various films follows. As the focus returns to ''Singin, Manny tearfully smiles.

Cast

J.C. Currais cameos as the truck driver during the film's opening scene, while 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.

Themes

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.

Marketing

The first red band trailer for ''Babylon'' premiered on September 12, 2022, at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival during a Q&A event with Chazelle and TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey

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