Babylon (2022 film)  

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Babylon is a 2022 American epic period comedy-drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, and Li Jun Li. Its plot chronicles the rise and fall of multiple characters during Hollywood's transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s.

Chazelle began developing the film in July 2019, with Lionsgate Films as the frontrunner to acquire the project. It was subsequently 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 in Los Angeles on December 15, 2022, and was released in the United States on December 23 by Paramount Pictures. The film polarized critics, who generally praised its cinematography, score, production values and performances, but were sharply divided on its direction, graphic content and runtime. It received five nominations at the 80th Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, winning Best Original Score for Justin Hurwitz, and nine nominations at the 28th Critics' Choice Awards, including Best Picture. It was a box-office bomb, grossing under $15 million against a production budget of around $78 million.

Plot

In 1926 Los Angeles, Mexican immigrant Manuel "Manny" Torres helps transport an elephant to a debauched, drug-fueled bacchanal at a Kinoscope Studios executive's mansion. He quickly becomes smitten with Nellie LaRoy, a brash, ambitious self-declared "star" from New Jersey. Upon meeting her and using cocaine together, Manny reveals his wish to be part of something bigger. While the elephant walks through, distracting partygoers, Manny helps carry away young actress Jane Thornton, who overdosed on drugs during a urolagniac act with obese actor Orville Pickwick.

Also attending are Chinese-American lesbian 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 the star. Manny meets and befriends Jack Conrad, a benevolent but troubled, oft-married film star, and drives a drunken Jack home. Jack helps Manny secure assistant jobs at Kinoscope (like finding a new camera to film an outdoors scene with Jack before nightfall); Manny climbs the studio system's ranks.

Nellie quickly 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 to technical changes, eventually attaining directorial jobs. Nellie struggles to navigate sound film's demands, and increases her drug use and reckless gambling, tarnishing her reputation despite Manny's assistance.

Nellie, shown to have an institutionalized mother, eggs on her drunken father (and inept business manager) to publicly fight a rattlesnake during a party; he passes out and she fights the snake, which bites her neck. Fay kills it and sucks out the venom; Nellie passionately kisses her. While running lines with his new wife Estelle, Jack is devastated to learn his longtime friend/producer, George Munn, has committed suicide.

By 1932, Jack begins to sense that his popularity has waned, but still works in low-budget Kinoscope films. Meanwhile, Sidney has secured his own musical film and orchestra, but is offended when studio executives convince Manny to request he use makeup to darken his skin for Southern audiences. Upon completion, Sidney leaves Kinoscope. As Hollywood becomes less libertine, executives tell Manny to fire Fay, a Kinoscope title writer, because of her perceived lesbian affair with Nellie. Elinor and Manny attempt to revamp Nellie's image and ingratiate her into Hollywood's high society, but Nellie lashes out against upper-class snobbery at a party, vomiting on a host.

Jack finds a cover story by Elinor about his declining popularity and confronts her; she explains that his star has faded, but he will be immortalized on film. Meanwhile, eccentric gangster James McKay threatens Nellie's life over her massive gambling debts. Manny initially rejects her pleas for help, but later secures funds from on-set drug pusher/aspiring actor "The Count", and visits James with him to pay off Nellie's debt. Manny panics upon learning the money is fake, made by his own prop-maker. James invites the men to a subterranean gathering space for debauched parties, raving about potential film ideas. When James realizes the cash is fake, he attempts to kill them, but they narrowly escape, killing James' henchman.

Manny asks Nellie to flee with him to Mexico, get married, and start a new life. She resists, but eventually agrees. However, James' associate tracks Manny down, killing The Count and his roommate but sparing Manny's life if Manny leaves Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Nellie reneges on her decision and dances away into the night. Jack encounters Fay at a hotel party; she reveals her departure for Europe. Afterwards, a despondent Jack returns to his hotel room and shoots himself.

A montage reveals newspaper clippings detailing Nellie being found dead in a hotel room at age 34, and Elinor's death at age 76.

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

See also

• Singin' in the Rain: A 1952 musical film that also depicts stars experiencing the transition from silent to sound films (or "talkies"), albeit in a lighthearted tone.
• The Artist: A 2011 French black-and-white, partially silent film, also depicting the transition to "talkies", and featuring a "Kinograph" studio resembling the "Kinoscope" of Babylon.
• Hollywood Babylon: A 1965 Kenneth Anger book about the dark side of early Hollywood, including the false premise that Clara Bow bedded the entire University of Southern California football team, somewhat as Nellie LaRoy brings that team to a party, and the Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle–Virginia Rappe death scandal, resembling Babylon's Orville Pickwick–Jane Thornton storyline.
• A Clockwork Orange: A 1971 Stanley Kubrick film (with heavy doses of sex, violence and reflection on art, like Babylon) which extensively uses the music from Singin' in the Rain, including in the end credits (compared to Babylon's end scene showing Singin' in the Rain), albeit in a much more cynical and sarcastic way than in Babylon.
• Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood: A 2019 Quentin Tarantino film which, like Babylon, features not only Brad Pitt as an aging film-industry veteran (fictional stuntman Cliff Booth) facing difficulty with changes in the industry, but also Margot Robbie as an upcoming, celebrated young actress (Sharon Tate) facing dangerous possibilities and people.