Babylon hits theaters next January 20 by Paramount Pictures.
Damien Chazelle (Whiplash, La La Land, First Man) directs his fourth feature film, starring diego bald, margot robbie Y Brad Pitt. The photography is in charge linus sandgrende and the musical score is the work of the talented justin hwirtz.
Babylon trailer and synopsis
Set in 1920s Los Angeles, it tells a story of ambition and inordinate excess that traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during a time of rampant decadence and depravity in early Hollywood.
Criticism of Babylon
To the sound of infectious jazz performed by a Justin Huwirtz in a state of grace, the bodies dance spidically, possessed by the narcotics that run through their altered blood systems. Hollywood stars, euphoric, beat up their elegant suits and dresses soaked in liquor, rubbing against the naked torsos of young people who serve as animation in an endless bacchanalia. This vertiginous spiral of excesses, sex and cocaine is one of the most sincere and titanic x-rays of the golden age of Hollywood.
Chazelle carves an abrupt and hypertrophied monument that, not without genuine beauty, reverences a particularly peculiar type of miracle, the filmic one. Babylon clearly depicts the magical and unmistakable communion that arises between chaos and order during the creative process of cinematography. Directors, interpreters, technicians and all kinds of hustlers who inhabit the filming sets, blend with pinpoint precision in favor of something bigger than themselves. It gives rise to an exercise in collective consciousness interested in the search for the persistent, the indelible. A leap into the void propelled by artistic ambition that ends up resulting in something simple and common: storytelling, present in our daily lives since ancient times, a tradition as imperceptible as it is necessary.
sensory odyssey
The mammoth visual composition, at times close to the grandiloquence of authors such as DW Griffith (Intolerance), exhibits a super gifted and stylized handling of the camera. A multitude of extensive sequence shots filmed with absolute mastery delimit the action in immeasurable places, loaded with countless extras, adopting monstrous dimensions. The aesthetic look, overloaded and kitsch, reinforced by the metallic and triumphant sounds of deafening trumpets, is of a vibrant virtuosity. The tonal palette that unfolds on the screen is overwhelming, the images manage to crush the viewer with their resounding force.
The precise and obsessive editing work is a key part of the glorious narrative unfolding that the film proposes. Their disjointed leaps and pirouettes are part of the sweet artifice that towers over the characters’ messy lives. The plot development, far from routine schematic conventions, maintains a classical formal spirituality, fostered by the explicit segmentation of the set-pieces.
The interpretative tour de force given by Margot Robbie is furiously physical, thus serving as a repeater of the sensory odyssey that encapsulates each visible element. Her toxic and irrepressible cadence accompanies the story, following the same rhythmic, dissonant and erratic beat. The rest of the cast (Calva and Pitt, among others) is a slightly more temperate counterpoint that maintains an equally brilliant acting level.
broken toys
The dirty and suffocating portrait that is composed in the film faithfully responds to the incalculable price of success. The frustrated aspirations accompany the anxiety to escape from a claustrophobic and anecdotal life. The fervent desire to be part of that unattainable galactic constellation filled with the proper names of unforgettable actors and actresses is unstoppable. Names that will later be read on the worn soles of their shoes, inherent to their forced condition as broken toys.
Babylon is a love letter to the seventh art written on paper worn by abundant tears, aware of the silent sacrifice that being part of a medium such as audiovisuals entails. It is a two-way cathartic testament that works as a great tribute and at the same time as a demonstration of the destructive capacity of such a demanding and selfish world.
Conclution
Babylon is an unforgettable lysergic experience that runs through the most luxurious and absorbing places in Los Angeles for more than 180 minutes. An unabashed homage to an immortal industry, a perverted rise/fall fable about a desperate love for celluloid. This is yet another confirmation of Damien Chazelle’s visionary talent as a filmmaker. A major, miraculous cinematographic milestone.