Damien Chazelle He had already shown us his love for cinema, and for Hollywood in particular, in La La Land, the film that won six Oscars, including one for him as best director. In the Babylon there is much less romance and melodrama, and there are orgies, excesses of all kinds, vomiting, scatology, bloody deaths and suicides. Ah, they are the protagonists Brad Pitt Y margot robbi.

It is also another era, the one it portrays Babylon, which is the transition from silent to sound cinema. The characters are varied, but the director of flick decides to focus on one (Manny Torres, played by Diego Calva), a young Mexican who wants to find his place in Hollywood. And that he enters the front door of a Mecca tycoon’s mansion of cinema, where there will be an orgiastic party that brings with it a … elephant.

There the other two co-stars will appear. Jack Conrad (a dark-haired Brad Pitt, who proves once again that comedy suits him very well when the script brings his most humorous moments to life), an actor who begins to sense his decline in Metro Goldwyn Meyer.

And the other is Nellie LaRoy, an aspiring gambling star. And to alcohol. And to drugs.

It’s easy to see how Manny secretly falls for Nellie, and it even seems normal for Nellie to say compliments to Jack’s face that he’s “fucker in person” in front of Jack’s partner.

everything is too much

Babylon It’s like this: everything is too much, we won’t say it’s too much, but sometimes everything is exaggerated, everything is thought of as a giant, like Chazelle’s ego, who surely will have been hit by the failure of his new film in North America (he grossed $15 million and cost $78 million).

But we already know that a film isn’t better or worse based on the number of people it takes or what it collects. Babylon runs for 188 minutes -you can get up and go to the bathroom when the credits roll, because there are no post-credits scenes, but you’ll miss the music…-, which you don’t notice until the last half hour rolls around. There, the endings are varied and not all are equally captivating or attractive.

Chazelle again shows the minority downgraded or ignored, as in flick Y La La Land, with people who live and feel the music. Jovan Adepo is Sidney Palmer, African-American jazz trumpeter, to whom the success of Al Jolson with his blackface in the jazz singer, the first sound film, can play a trick on him. The same happens with Manny, who denies his nationality, due to anti-Mexicanism in the United States, and prefers to lie by saying that he is Spanish.

There are many familiar faces, in supporting roles, such as Toby Maguire and Max Minghella (The Handmaid’s Tale), who plays Irving Thalberg, a real-life Hollywood executive.

But it is the three protagonists who carry the weight of the story, which holds surprises. Each has its own scene on display too.

Music is central to Chazelle’s work, leaning, once again heavily, and how well it does, on Justin Hurwitz’s score, which won an Academy Award for La La Land and led him inside flick Y The first man on the moon.

“Babylon”

Good

Comedy drama. USA, 2022. 188′, SAM 16 R. Of: Damien Chazelle. With: Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, Jean Smart, Diego Calva, Olivia Wilde. Rooms: IMAX, Hoyts Abasto, Cinemark Palermo, Cinépolis Recoleta and Houssay, Showcase Belgrano.