You Look Like Nellie LaRoy

In Defense of Babylon and In Critique of Hollywood

Babylon (2022)

“Honey, you don’t become a star. You either are one or you ain’t. I am.”

Every now and then I come across Babylon slander and I’m thoroughly convinced everyone is watching a different cut than I am. To me, Babylon is one of the most underrated and misunderstood movies of the decade, if not this century, if not all time. Babylon absolutely flopped at the box office, only making $63 million on an $80 million dollar budget. People always claim to want to support original films, but the reaction to this movie made it clear that nobody actually means what they say when they say that. Babylon is as wacky and weird as an original film can get, but people were reveling in its losses because they A) don’t like “movies about movies” B) were tired of Damien Chazelle and wanted to see him fall C) were convinced Margot Robbie was box office poision (lol) and D) all of the above. However, I want to focus on the first point because I think that’s where all of the Babylon hate comes from. Babylon is not any old “movie about movies.” Babylon is a cynic’s take on Singin’ in the Rain where the glitz, glam, parties, music, and drugs are all a facade to the darkness that lies in the history of an industry that has been erased, white-washed, straight-washed, and glamorized. Babylon isn’t a love letter to Hollywood. It’s a suicide note.

It’s frustrating to see any discussion of this movie reduced down to the elephant shit, coke, blood, vomit, and bodily fluids. Chazelle has a reason for including all of that and most of it is contained to the first thirty minutes of the film. There’s so much passion, heart, and emotion that lies in the rest of the runtime. It would be obtuse to disregard all of that for the sake of emphasizing the (intentional!) insanity of the opening party. Even the rattlesnake and alligator have a purpose here. They’re cold blooded animals fit for a cold blooded town where the gentle don’t survive.

Not to mention, what Hurwitz accomplishes with the score here is a masterclass in tone shaping and shifting. I’m going to be talking about this score snub on my death bed. I’d say the Academy is weird for refusing to acknowledge the greatness that is Babylon's score, but that's not even true! They used "Voodoo Mama" in their Oscars promo that awards season so guess who got the last laugh?

What I love most about Babylon is Chazelle’s work on both the writing and directing fronts. There are so many moving parts to this film. It must have been an absolute headache to write, shoot, and edit, but everyone involved pulled it off perfectly by some miracle like it was the last movie they’d ever get to make it. The approach here interestingly reminds me of one of my other favorite films of the decade, Asteroid City, with both films exploring the existential questions that linger over a post-lockdown film industry struggling to recover.

I always cry during the sunset shot. When everything comes together like that, movies really are the most magical thing in the world. The same goes for Babylon. Every piece of this three-hour long puzzle fits together to make a masterpiece, an epic the likes of which haven’t been seen in God knows how long. I don’t enjoy Brad Pitt or Tobey Maguire offscreen or onscreen here, but those are truly my only criticisms. Recast Pitt with an unproblematic former heart throb movie star and get rid of Maguire’s character completely and you’ve pretty much got a perfect film, a film that makes me want to stand up crying and cheering like audiences did when they watched The Jazz Singer for the first time all the way back in 1927. A century later, there’s still nothing on this Earth more magical than movies. “What happens up on that screen means something.” But as Chazelle makes clear, there’s more to the story than just what happens up on screen.

Margot Robbie is up there as one of my favorite actors of all time. She becomes each character she plays with every fiber of her being and always looks like she’s having the time of her life doing it. Naturally, Nellie LaRoy immediately became one of my favorite characters of all time. Nellie loves movies and music and dancing and drugs and boys and girls and life and love. She’s a free soul until the very end, always living on her own terms. I love that her bisexuality is such a major plot point too. Hollywood would truly be nothing without bisexual movie stars, and I’m so glad Chazelle went there and did so with an evident respect and care for this character. Robbie herself is just on a whole other level here. I didn’t mind her missing an acting nomination for Barbie, but she should have swept awards season with this. Babylon is often referred to as failed Oscar bait, but that again feels dismissive of what Robbie and the rest of the cast is pulling off here. When she does the iconic Debbie Reynolds Singin' in the Rain double tear while Diego Calva’s Manny is pleading “Te amo,” I truly see God. But more than anything, LaRoy is a fleshed out version of Singin’ in the Rain’s Lina Lamont, a character of the times refused depth for the sake of comedy. Babylon shows there are always two sides to a story and a person. LaRoy’s romance with Manny (let's cast Calva and his pretty eyes in everything, thank you) is painfully beautiful and raw in a way most film romances just aren't anymore. Their chemistry and love for each other is so pure and magnetic. I wish the movie was more of them and less of domestic abuser Brad Pitt, but I digress.

I also would have liked for Li Jun Li’s Lady Fay Zhu and Jovan Adepo’s Sidney Palmer storylines to be given more weight and focus, but I appreciate their inclusion and Chazelle’s intentions nonetheless. They represent communities that have been historically and infamously mistreated in Hollywood and misrepresented on the big screen. Chazelle really commits to shedding light on the dark and unexplored aspects of Hollywood’s problematic history which makes the “self-indulgent movie about movies” critiques so annoying to me. They’re straight up incorrect! If anything, Chazelle is doing the opposite. It’s almost like he’s apologizing for La La Land, acknowledging that the movie business isn’t as dreamy and spotless of an experience for most people, especially for those of us who aren’t straight and white. I love both films, La La Land even more, but Babylon just feels as real and as raw as it gets, coming from a filmmaker who seems to have been demystified by the industry and is trying to understand where we came from, how we got here, and where to go now. They hated Damien Chazelle because he told the truth. What else can I say?

I really think this film is going to be reevaluated over time. If people actually took the time to sit through all three hours and look at Hollywood through Chazelle’s critical and cynical lens, I do believe they would be able to find something to love — a character, a shot, a scene, a line. I don’t know how long it’s going to take. It might take years or decades, but someone, someday in the future will come across this film long after we’ve all passed and understand exactly what it’s trying to say. They’ll make movies and try to make this industry a better place because of it, and our ghosts will get to watch.

“A child born in 50 years will stumble across your image flickering on a screen and feel he knows you, like a friend, though you breathed your last before he breathed his first. You've been given a gift. Be grateful. Your time today is through, but you'll spend eternity with angels and ghosts.”

Last year, I got to see Signin’ in the Rain with a live orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, and I rewatched Babylon that same day. I was thinking a lot about Jean Smart’s character’s quote about how movie stars live on through film with angels and ghosts long after their deaths. The cast and crew of Singin’ in the Rain may be gone, but their legacy is cemented in a film and that’s the most wonderful thing in the world to me. Gene Kelly still gets to dance, Debbie Reynolds still gets to sing, and Donald O’Connor still gets to make us laugh, and we’ll still clap for all of them decades later. Movies are timeless, but that doesn’t mean the industry that makes them needs to stay the same. In fact, it shouldn’t.

Babylon is the exact opposite of a love letter to Hollywood. It’s a hate letter, in Chazelle’s own words, in the most ambitious, eccentric, stunning, maximalist, R-rated way possible. Movies are messy and mad and so are the people who make them, but when you're sitting in a packed theater staring at a projection on screen that's bringing to life your wildest imagination, maybe it was all worth it. But maybe it isn't and Hollywood, moviegoers, we've all lost the plot. Maybe cinema isn't worth saving, but maybe we might just be mad enough to try. Maybe those of us who will save it aren't the straight, white men who have been running this industry for decades, but the women, queer folks, and BIPOC who this industry was taken from in the first place. Babylon serves as both a history lesson and a cautionary tale as we head into the next era of moviemaking for those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. Cinema never dies, it adapts. It’s about time Hollywood adapts with it. Whether we learn from all of this or not, we had a good run, didn’t we?

"God, I've never done nothing except disappoint people my whole life. Teachers told me I was no good. Boys told me I was no good. Every fucking casting director in the city told me I was too short or I was too fat. Usually, I was too fat. You know, my mama actually had some fat years too. You wouldn't know it now, looking at her, but she did. They fucked up with me, Manny. They really fucked up with me. 'Cause I make 'em squirm. And I like making 'em squirm. Let 'em know that I got here on my terms, not theirs. And when I'm done, I'm gonna dance my ass off into the night. And they'll know - everyone will fucking know that they could never control one goddamn fucking thing.”