I have a rule with new directors based upon scientific principle – the rule that two is a coincidence, three is a pattern. With Jordan Peele, I loved Get Out and Us, but Nope solidified it for me. With Robert Eggers, I loved The Witch and The Lighthouse, The Northman did solidify it for me, despite a few caveats. Ari Aster for instance, I await Beau is Afraid with great anticipation. Chazelle was solidified with me with in my opinion one of the most underrated movies of the past ten years, First Man, but now with Babylon… Chazelle is not only one of the best new film-makers we have working today, but one who does not rest on his laurels and with Babylon has not only made certainly my favourite film of the year thus far, but one that defiantly and with incredible complexity deconstructs and rejects time after time his biggest filmic success, La La Land. Babylon is in a word; sublime. But is it for everyone? As I’m sure you’re already aware; not by any stretch of the imagination.

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What has Chazelle made here then with Babylon, his fifth film and his second in the world of film itself, aswell as featuring once more his fourth film with a focus on jazz instrumentalists and musicians? Your milage may vary on the success of the film, however he has set out to make and succeeded in making one of the most epic and expansive films about an era that I have ever seen. Fuelled by an endless budget and a perhaps commercially blind (if hopeful, which is better than other studios and other projects) sight for its theatrical presentation, Chazelle has been given every tool he can to utilise his profound talent as a film-maker to make this ‘end of times’ epic about the start of everything. The film is as much about beginnings, as it is about ends. Above all else Chazelle as an auteur has his stamps all over, but as was the case before the influences of your Scorsese’s and your Paul Thomas Andersons are undoubtable. In particular Boogie Nights, which Chazelle even lifts the “one last thing” / Alfred Molina / Rahad Jackson segment concept for one of the final of this films many truly astounding, different and all wholly entertaining and compelling sequences. The film is narratively strong and centred along the lives of our three leads, despite these repeated segments and sequences that move away or feature or inform those three chief stories; Diego Calva, Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt across ten years or so as we see the silent era of film adapt to the talkies era and by the time the film reaches its final scene and we realise the chief concept of what we have been watching up until this point (something that despite being a fan of the imperative text I’m avoiding mentioning, slipped past me), we begin to grasp the overall conceit of the feature. Everything is incredibly well purposed to be in purpose of the excess this film relishes in, it’s exhausting, relentless, yet is never boring, nor is by any stretch gratuitous or unnecessary. The editing of Tom Cross is more than just constant cutting to make a ‘coke energy’, it’s precise and deliberate and some of the best of the year. Pair that with the stunningly beautiful cinematography by Linus Sandgren, the film just bows down to Chazelle’s stunning vision and everybody works on that same goal of bringing this vision to the screen. But it’s with the music by Justin Hurwitz that I really began to click into what Chazelle is going for. From the start Hurwitz’s score is sensational, as expected, a bolder, richer and frankly more fun score than his previous work with Chazelle. But then I heard a few notes… Then I heard a few melodies… That I had heard before. Repeated themes from La La Land, distorted, played around with, set now over scenes of darkness and grit, long gone past the planetarium haze. Then I realised that Chazelle was almost damning his previous work with that film. “You thought my last film was too rosy? Well here you f*cking go. Here’s the truth of it. The whole truth”. Of course that’s the sort of mentality that could easily turn off or repulse certain audience members, but when the work is this good, how can one not go along for the ride?

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The performances across the board are terrific, perfect again I would say. Everybody is on top form and manages to perfectly deliver upon the heightened, yet pained, yet incredibly full of energy and manic, yet deeply melancholic vibe that this film rides out. Diego Calva is our lead here and his character goes on the biggest arc one might say, it is his aspirational tale from literally being covered in animal faeces (in the film’s outrageous and hilarious very opening) to a minor mogul inside the industry that marks the films clearest through line. Overall Calva has a real solid performance here and balances blind naivety with knowledge, all in a very reactionary role that for many could be seen as purely reactionary, but instead Calva makes it his own and so much more. Margot Robbie is an encapsulation and embodiment of the films mania in one solitary character, a hopeful, yet devastatingly destructive individual who’s joy and bliss can’t be stopped, nor can their vices. Robbie is sensational as you’d expect, but here she really does deliver one of the most visceral, physical and deeply awe-inspiring turns in some time. I just don’t remember in recent memory, someone giving their absolute all to such a demanding, vulgar and again visceral performance. It’s incredible work and it’s incredibly hard work and Robbie is more than up to matching Chazelle’s grand view. Moving on to the next two performance I want to return to Chazelle’s screenplay which really is the films perhaps most underrated quality in recent reviews; it’s witty, it’s funny, it’s touching and it’s all so propellant the whole time. I bring this up to mention now because both Brad Pitt and Jean Smart are the ones who have to give the big ‘magic of movie’s speech and both are flawless, in performance and in writing – they are truthful, haunting and realistic, not the normal mouth-piece stuff that people think of when they hear that dreaded phrase I feel; “the film’s big moment is a touching speech about the power of cinema”. Chazelle has no interest in that, nor should you. Smart is great the whole time, but her monologue is indeed one of the films more haunting aspects. But for me Pitt has once again excelled in a way that does not surprise me, but does wow me all over again. The film starts off with his usual engrossingly charismatic self, only to grow more and more melancholic as the film goes on, concluding in perhaps the entire films most impacting scene – a touching moment shared with Li Jun Li’s figure, another sublime performance in this film. I’ve been thinking about the film a lot, but Pitt’s final lines of dialogue have really been floating around. Li’s character is a little underserved compared the chief trio, as is Jovan Adepo’s character of a jazz musician. Now upon returning to the film and understanding the more ensemble nature then their amount on screen may feel more organic, but like everything in the film it was all so good that yes, of course I would watch a whole Adepo or Li focussed film and so what we get here will always feel like not enough. Beyond these chief figures there quite literally are scene to scene at least one standout performance for each sequence, ranging from those even more manic than our chief figures, to those incredibly over-the-top, to the subdued, to the – I guess the point is that every single actor on the screen is delivering. Every single person behind the camera is delivering. Every person who worked on this film delivers to an incredibly high level, and yes, that does in this case make an absolute modern masterpiece, which will be reclaimed and rejected over and over again for many, many years to come I have sincerely no doubt.

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A bold 10/10 epic that is as much a rush of pure and just as elegant as it is athletic film-making as it is a disgusting, vile, adrenaline ride of vulgarity and depravity. It does have all the beauty and elegance and filmic wonder of a La La Land, but also has a completely relishable distaste and lack of glamorisation of history. This is pure honesty told with language and profanity based anachronisms, but always the honesty at the heart of it. It’s thrilling, it’s unstoppable, it’s Chazelle going to new levels. It feels like an apocalypse statement on ‘films about films’, it feels like Chazelle throwing everything at the wall and somehow watching it stick, it feels and is for me a masterpiece of its kind. You really will love it or hate it, and I feel almost cynically predictable in the fact that I did unabashedly adore the film. 

SPOLIER P.S. Let’s talk about that final montage. Yes I have given this film 10/10, but I have to admit that it’s a bit of a Magnolia situation for me. Now Magnolia is now and has been for some time one of my favourite films of all time and the finale choice of Magnolia is one of the bigger and bolder choices in 90’s big-budget cinema. Here it’s just a final montage that just could be cut so easily. Once I realised what the montage was going to be and once we reached two separate James Cameron clips, I have to admit I did get a guttural low feeling in my stomach of “Damien! Why? You had me, you had a genuinely perfect 3hr 6 minutes only to throw it away for 60 seconds of Oscar advertisement break ‘history of movies’ montage”. Eventually the montage stops and we get the ending that we should have received about a minute and a half ago, the close up of Calva’s character crying. A perfect ending in my eyes. Time will fade this anger and just like Magnolia I will forgo by dislike of a blip due to my absolute adoration of the rest of the film, but Damien, it’s not that the rest of the film is subtle, but did you have to be that obvious? Avatar, Damien? Avatar? I know, I get it. I really do. I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t be able to get it.

-        -  Thomas Carruthers