Babylon (2022)
Country: US
Technical: col/2.39:1 189m
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li
Synopsis:
A Mexican chancer attaches himself to three industry players during the transition to sound, but is ultimately undone by his inability to square personal feelings with business imperatives.
Review:
While La La Land joyfully channelled Jacques Demy into a fantasy of old Hollywood, the present 'folie de grandeur' does what Singin' in the Rain did entertainingly in 100 minutes, and The Artist slightly less so, during three hours of excess which fuse Kenneth Anger with Erich Von Stroheim and somehow hope to add up to a paean to the cinema's ability to endure. In the meantime it starts with a misfire, as if Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon actually reflected how they made pictures in 1926, before focusing on avatars for John Gilbert, Hedda Hopper, Jean Harlow, Anna May Wong... Louis Armstrong? Set piece follows set piece, the best actually involving shooting a movie, the others presumably to show how in Hollywood everyone was far too busy having a party to consider that it might not all last forever, and that whoever 'they' were it made no difference to how the studio saw them or the fickle public. In the end it scores neither as a Sunset Boulevard nor a Mulholland Drive, while mistakenly believing that if it tries long and hard enough it can perhaps be both.
Country: US
Technical: col/2.39:1 189m
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li
Synopsis:
A Mexican chancer attaches himself to three industry players during the transition to sound, but is ultimately undone by his inability to square personal feelings with business imperatives.
Review:
While La La Land joyfully channelled Jacques Demy into a fantasy of old Hollywood, the present 'folie de grandeur' does what Singin' in the Rain did entertainingly in 100 minutes, and The Artist slightly less so, during three hours of excess which fuse Kenneth Anger with Erich Von Stroheim and somehow hope to add up to a paean to the cinema's ability to endure. In the meantime it starts with a misfire, as if Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon actually reflected how they made pictures in 1926, before focusing on avatars for John Gilbert, Hedda Hopper, Jean Harlow, Anna May Wong... Louis Armstrong? Set piece follows set piece, the best actually involving shooting a movie, the others presumably to show how in Hollywood everyone was far too busy having a party to consider that it might not all last forever, and that whoever 'they' were it made no difference to how the studio saw them or the fickle public. In the end it scores neither as a Sunset Boulevard nor a Mulholland Drive, while mistakenly believing that if it tries long and hard enough it can perhaps be both.
Country: US
Technical: col/2.39:1 189m
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li
Synopsis:
A Mexican chancer attaches himself to three industry players during the transition to sound, but is ultimately undone by his inability to square personal feelings with business imperatives.
Review:
While La La Land joyfully channelled Jacques Demy into a fantasy of old Hollywood, the present 'folie de grandeur' does what Singin' in the Rain did entertainingly in 100 minutes, and The Artist slightly less so, during three hours of excess which fuse Kenneth Anger with Erich Von Stroheim and somehow hope to add up to a paean to the cinema's ability to endure. In the meantime it starts with a misfire, as if Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon actually reflected how they made pictures in 1926, before focusing on avatars for John Gilbert, Hedda Hopper, Jean Harlow, Anna May Wong... Louis Armstrong? Set piece follows set piece, the best actually involving shooting a movie, the others presumably to show how in Hollywood everyone was far too busy having a party to consider that it might not all last forever, and that whoever 'they' were it made no difference to how the studio saw them or the fickle public. In the end it scores neither as a Sunset Boulevard nor a Mulholland Drive, while mistakenly believing that if it tries long and hard enough it can perhaps be both.