2022 - BABYLON, a strange messy tribute to Hollywood

 Damien Chazelle is the writer/director of Babylon.  Chazelle had previously made the film La La Land, the revisionist musical drama that featured leads who couldn't sing or dance.  Babylon appears to be Chazelle's tribute to Hollywood's silent film phase and it's transition to sound in the late 1920's and early 30's. Like audiences would be interested in that.  The film chiefly follows a few story lines. 

Margot Robbie is a woman who believes she is destined to become a major Hollywood star, Brad Pitt is the fading Hollywood leading man caught in the transition to sound.  Diego Calva plays a Hispanic who improbably rises to the top of the studio hierarchy as an executive.  The film is well cast and the performances are at a high caliber.  Robbie in particular really goes for it with an all out diva performance.  

 

Babylon is a frustrating film. the first 30 to 40 minutes of it are quite good with lots of black humor particularly in an extended party scene and the filming of a costume epic.  It seems that everything story wise starts to go wrong around the one hour running time of the film as the film transitions into drama  and about forty minutes later the film completely descends into melodrama.  Frankly the script is just a complete disaster.

Damien Chazelle is a talented filmmaker who clearly has a personal vision, however he will need to get his rather excessive and overblown style particularly in his screenwriting under control if he wants to have a career in the film business.  For all of it's ambitions Babylon is a major disappointment.

The running time is a ridiculous 189 minutes.

2016 - LA LA LAND, a movie for people who haven't seen a musical

Well I have to give the director/writer Damien Chazelle some credit.  It takes some guts to film a live action musical in today's entertainment market.  Musicals only seem to exist in the movies if they are animated with lots of cartoon figures singing, singing, singing.   

Chazelle says that he was inspired by Demy's Umbrellas of Cherborough and boy was he ever. The ghost of that film hangs heavily over this one..  Chazelle strives for that magical quality Demy brought to that film but unfortunately it just seems beyond his grasp the story just didn't move me emotionally.

I think the chief problem here is that neither one of the leads are professional singers or dancers.  Sure they give it the old college try but they can't dance and Emma Stone just can't sing.  Ryan Gosling has a pretty thin voice but he seems to be able to pull off the singing part (barely.)

Chazelle wants to modernize the musical.  To this end he adds a downbeat ending to the film and then a fantasy ending sequence.  I just don't think this  comes off it just makes a long film even longer.    He just doesn't have the style and talent that Demy brought to the musical genre when Demy rethought and revised it in The Umbrellas of Cherborough.

128 minutes written by Damien Chazelle.