"Babylon": A Magnificent Retrospective of the Film History or a Delicate Pile of Rubbish?

Damien Chazelle, the darling of the 2010s Oscars, holds the record for the youngest Best Director in Oscar history. He's also the only American director to win the Best Director award in the past decade. However, with the highest budget of his career, his latest film has hit a significant snag.

The box office performance of "Babylon" was a disappointment from the start, earning only $3.6 million in its opening weekend. Its critical reception could have been better, with Chazelle and his nods to directors Steven Spielberg and James Cameron in the film's closing credits, returning empty-handed from the recent North American awards season. Why did this epic work about early Hollywood fail? Will the genius director Damien Chazelle be left behind by the rapidly changing film industry, just like the characters in his film?

Paramount Pictures Corporation's Second Seed

Since achieving success with "Whiplash" in 2014, Damien Chazelle's stature in Hollywood has been on a steady ascent. Despite "La La Land" losing the Best Picture award to "Moonlight" in 2016, its $20 million production budget yielded a global box office gross of $437 million, solidifying major studios' faith in this talented director from Harvard.

After "La La Land," Damien Chazelle reunited with the original cast for the biopic "First Man," with a budget of $60 million. The film performed decently: a global box office of $105 million and 4 Oscar nominations, winning 1. Damien Chazelle's performance in directing a budget film was satisfactory.

Finally, Damien Chazelle had the chance to create his own "Hollywood Story." Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie are the stars of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." The budget for "Babylon" is even slightly higher than that of the former. Paramount Pictures Corporation invested $100 million in production costs, one of the largest increases in production costs a major studio can invest in a film, second only to top-tier comic book adaptations and superhero films.

In the 2023 global film budget rankings, "Babylon" ranks 14th in non-streaming produced films with a $100 million investment, comparable to Disney's "Strange World" ($135 million), Sony's "Uncharted" ($120 million), and Paramount Pictures Corporation's "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" ($90 million). Compared to "Top Gun: Maverick" ($170 million production cost, $1.48 billion global box office, the global box office champion of 2022), "Babylon" is a complete loss with only $63 million in international box office.

The Most "Politically Correct" Work

In terms of film technique, "Babylon" continues Damien Chazelle's signature style of "musicality." Among his four main works, he is known for his smooth camera work, short close-up shots, rich rhythm, and a musical sense in scene scheduling. Furthermore, the film's climax breaks through its genre, introducing elements of thriller or even horror. This shift is underscored by the ironic repetition of Nellie LaRoy's "Some people are born stars," completely flipping the spectacle narrative and plunging the characters' lives into the darkest depths of Los Angeles.

In "Babylon," Tobey Maguire portrays a creditor who takes the protagonist, Manny Torres, to a seedy party in the Los Angeles sewer. Thematically, "Babylon" differs from Damien Chazelle's previous works, such as "New York White Man's Dream Story," "Los Angeles White Man and White Woman's Dream Story," and "American Moon Landing Melody," by embracing mainstream "political correctness" in all aspects.

Among the five main characters whose Hollywood journeys are depicted in the film, there are ethnic minorities such as Manny Torres, a Mexican immigrant; Lady Fay Zhu, a Chinese actress; and Sidney Palmer, an African-American trumpeter. The story pays particular attention to these ethnic minority characters: Damien Chazelle, being a band member himself, clearly favors Sidney Palmer, the trumpeter, and Lady Fay Zhu's character is pivotal in reconstructing the first on-screen kiss between women in history. Her character also explores ambiguous same-sex tendencies with the female protagonist Nellie LaRoy, and she is depicted as being ostracized and ultimately forced to move to Europe.

The Disappearance of Dream Narratives

In an interview, Damien Chazelle said, "'La La Land' is more like a fairy tale, and 'Babylon' is just the opposite." When asked which is more realistic, Damien Chazelle admitted it was the latter. Perhaps to be closer to this kind of "reality," or probably due to changes in experience, he has a new expression for the fate of his paranoid characters in "Babylon."

In "Whiplash," "La La Land," and "First Man," the protagonists make endless sacrifices in the pursuit of their personal goals. The vivid portrayal of this pain makes it easy for the audience to empathize with these "fools"—the "fool's success" is a tried-and-true story prototype.

However, the characters in "Babylon" don't even have the opportunity to progress through personal effort and sacrifice. When the time comes, Nellie LaRoy quickly rises to stardom in the silent film era. However, with the arrival of the sound film era, Nellie LaRoy and Jack Conrad, played by Brad Pitt, quickly become obsolete. Their resistance is simply a refusal to move on, leading to their silent self-destruction.

As Lady Fay Zhu prepares to depart for Europe, Jack Conrad bids her farewell with elegance, saying, "See you in Venice, see you in Prague." In the film's closing moments, Manny Torres, the protagonist who returns to Los Angeles after many years, silently sheds tears in front of the magnificent play of light and shadow on the screen. If this is a story about pursuing dreams, then it parallels the iconic scene in "La La Land" where Emma Stone's character reflects on the phrase "She said she'd do it again." It can also be seen as a heartfelt declaration of love for the art of cinema.

However, we only see his powerlessness under the tide of the times, failing to feel the characters' efforts and sacrifices. Viewing it from a character's perspective, the self-reflection after experiencing complete failure resonates with the current sentiment: amidst the pandemic, many have been left behind by the times and struggle to recover. Yet, because so many have not even had the chance to achieve what Nellie LaRoy and Jack Conrad did in their prime, the "fall from grace" doesn't resonate as deeply, and a cinematic montage of their decline seems almost extravagant. This contradiction between reality and dreams might explain why the film failed to connect with audiences and why Damien Chazelle faces a challenging issue to address.