Babylon: Damien Chazelle's chaotic tribute to the evolution of Cinema.

 The year of 2023 has fortunately started with watching the anticipated movie "Babylon" directed by the critically acclaimed director Damien Chazelle. I finally managed to watch it with a couple of my friends and it was quite an experience. 

Unlike 2022 where some of the movies did not really lived according to my expectations, Babylon has delivered more than I expected. The 3 hour long fiasco created by Damien has inspirations from many movies with his unique touch. The main characters played by Diego Calva, Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt did paint the evolution of sound in cinemas during 1930's and the madness behind the scenes as Chazelle wanted.

First of all, kudos to Justin Hurwitz and the whole team for making such amazing background music that keeps you elevated and enhanced the scenes in correct form. The jazzy vibes echoes undoubtedly with Chazelle's Whiplash. If you are a lover of such music, you will be tempted to listen to the score in loop. 

The whole vibe of exaggeration and sarcasm which Chazelle had in mind maybe debatable among the viewers. The 20 minute scene before the title appears just made me feel a throwback to the opening of Scorsese's Wolf of Wall Street. I clearly can imagine Chazelle taking some inspirations from Scorsese and Tarantino in various parts of the movie. The chaos in the movie is unimaginable and has various shades raging from just awkward scenes to pure satire.  The long continuous shots Chazelle managed to take in shooting this massive scenes is quite breathtaking which I also remember seeing in the beginning scene of  Iñárritu's Birdman.  There are many scenes in this movie which are just worth watching again and again. For example, there is a particular long scene where the people are trying their first time to shoot a movie with sound. The tension that builds during the takes where no one can make a sound to get the voice of the actors starts with intense which turns into comedy and shifts again back to intense is quite a rollercoaster of emotions I have scene in cinema for a while. Chazelle really took his time in making people realize the intensity of making a cinema with his humour. I can list scenes on and on from this movie which can have various interpretations to various people.

Coming back to the actors, Diego Calva did a fantastic job as a metaphor of the audience in this whole drama where he just watches people rise and fall and manages to get his job done and tries to make his contribution in the world of Hollywood. Margot Robbie always amuses me in the screen.  Her character briefly can be described an ambitious girl coming to LA and wants to get famous doing whatever she needs to be and everyone knows her in a superficial level. This is quite relatable in the business of cinema where you hardly know what people actually are but then they vanish to nowhere symbolising how an actor manages to create different personalities to the whole audience so that the audience loves him. Starting from his Italian accent referring to Inglorious Bastards, Brad Pitt plays a well known movie star who is losing his fame but tries his best to be in the business and the journey he ventures understanding that his time is over as an actor. The brief cameo by Tobey Maguire is quite unforgettable and needs a mention. 

The meta philosophy of Babylon of showing the evolution of cinema in a chaotic movie and inspired by "Singing in the Rain" in many ways will be surely be appreciated by cinephiles. The last 5 minute sequence of the movie is the one of the rare moments which made me fully overwhelmed as how cinemas have deeply influenced my life. Aside from the debate from the critics and the reception at box office of getting stomped by Avatar, I am sure this will be remembered as one of Chazelle's great works and stays in line of his career.  I am looking forward to buying a Blu ray version of this. 

"In a sense all film is entering into someone else's dreams. 

Maybe we can share the same dreams, share the same experiences"       -  David Lynch. 

 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Aftersun : Charlotte Wells’s breathtaking depiction of father-daughter relationship is worthy to be remembered,

This year’s award season was quite a wild ride ranging from Everything Everywhere at all once to  Quiet Along the Western Front.  Among these Aftersun got into limelight. Charlotte Wells’s debut movie starring Paul Mescal got quickly into the names and after watching it I clearly see why this got so much acclaim. Even at times I feel it deserves more recognition considering the impact the whole cinema does. Aftersun is a slice of life story about a holiday trip of Calum (Paul Mescal) spending time with his daughter Sophie ( Frankie Corio) in Turkey of whose moments are recorded in MiniDV Camera by Sophie at times. The film traverses along all various topics of discussions between dad and his daughter. Calum is separated from Sophie’s mother and he is going through a financial crisis in his life. This is depicted in various ways throughout the film and also even Sophie realizes this at times. In the beginning, when they both go to Scuba diving, Sophie loses the mask and Calum i...
Read more

Hummingbirds : A unique documentary about slice of life addressing tons of current issues in USA .

Movie : Hummingbirds. Director :  Silvia Del Carmen Costaños,  Estefanía "Beba" Contreras. Cast : Silvia Del Carmen Costaños ,  Estefanía "Beba" Contreras. Year : 2023. My experience in documentary is quite minimal. I have watched some of them but you do not think of watching any of them usually. In my tour of Berlinale which I and my friend were browsing through the list to spend our evening, we come across this documentary called "Hummingbirds". The only thing that strike my eyes was a documentary issuing present day conflicts in USA. In my mind, I had no expectations of what to expect from such an indie documentary. Turns out after we both left the movie, we were both were very overwhelmed (I was in tears for a while) and enjoyed it a lot more than we expected. No wonder this documentary bagged the award for "Grand Prix International Jury "at Berlinale 23.  Directed by Silvia Del Carmen Costaños and Estefanía "Beba" Contreras (who al...
Read more

Antman and The Wasp : Quantamania : A chaotic hasty introduction to the next multiversal threat of the MCU.

 I got interested into the realm of superhero movies in depth when the Marvel movies really tried to make a business in the cinema industry. Especially, movies like  Captain America : Civil War and the others where the ones I got caught with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Even these movies have dramas and made mostly in big scale for commercial success, the underlying idea of superheroes dating from comics and connecting all the movies to have an epic finale against a big villain intrigues me. Feige with his vision of Iron Man had made this possible with his 10 year conclusion of Infinity Saga of all the superheroes fighting the mad Titan Thanos. Fans were questioning at that time what is the next saga going to be and who is going to replace that gravitas what Thanos had. The Marvel Disney+ TV series Loki, finally gave us the clue of this introducing a Multiversal variant of the titular villain : Kang the Conqueror. This created a lot of hype in the Marvel fan base and made us...
Read more