Babylon (2022)

I admire writer-director Damian Chazelle's work, so it pains me to say that Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day.

 

Angels and Ghosts of Toxic Nostalgia

or

Make Hollywood a Cesspool Again 

 

Yeah, well, nostalgia isn't what it used to be. 

 

Damien Chazelle's Babylon tries to be many things in its break-neck, inarticulate way: a love-sonnet to "Cinema", an hysterical screed about ambition (the uphill) and the Fickle Finger of Fate—and Fashion (the downside), an impotent rage about the inevitability of Change, and an excremental wallow in excess "just because we can."

 

It's also a bit of a litmus test on how you feel about Hollywood: starry-eyed dreamy or worm-at-the-bottom-of-a-tequila-bottle cynical. You can love the taste of sausage, but you don't want to see how it's made. 

 

Movies about movie-making rarely make a lot of coin at the box-office, but the industry does love to bestow them with Oscars. Babylon has failed at the former, and, because it's not properly rose-Technicolored besotted with The Art, it won't win any bling, either.

It's 1926, and Kinoscope studio head Don Wallach (Jeff Garlin) is throwing a wild party—security is loose, morals are looser, and everybody is either tight or flaccid—at his palatial Bel Air estate high atop a graded mountain with nothing around it but steppe and orange groves. The house looks like it fell out of the sky to the most desolate place on Earth. Thus, it's quite a task to transport anything to the place. We meet Manuel Torres (Diego Calva)—"Manny" to just about everybody who can give him a job—who has convinced one of Wallach's assistants (Flea) that he can deliver an elephant to the party. An elephant. This proves problematic and particularly perilous as the pachyderm's poundage prevents purchase. The solution? Roughage. The subsequent eruption of elephant diarrhea—which Chazelle stages like a famous silent film clip (thanks, Damien! This won't influence my review at all!)—blows enough ballast to allow everyone to get all the way up the hill.

That serves as a warning shot for the next 30 minutes as Chazelle presents his version of the "Godfather wedding", where he introduces all of the principal characters attending this orgiastic party of excess. But, where Coppola stages his sequence with snapshots of telling detail, Chazelle glides his camera in, up and around the frontal and backal nudity bumping and grinding to obfuscate the- something-to-offend-everyone anything goes-ery of his bacchanal.

We meet: Manny (of course), Mexican immigrant, who is the ultimate volunteer ("I'll do it!") to get ahead; the gossip columnist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), who's seen a lot ("I knew Proust, you know..."), but only divulges the choice bits when it's to her highest advantage; star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), a reigning light at M-G-M, slumming it at the party which he attends on his wife (Olivia Wilde) just announcing that she's divorcing him as the capper to their latest spat, Lady Faye Zhu (Li Jun Li), the most capable one of the bunch—she does a rich Dietrich routine to a song that's hard to believe was of the period—but is a minor player at Kinoscope because 1) she is bi-sexual (which she can hide) and 2) she is Asian (which she can't). 

There's bandleader Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), who is professional amidst all the madness, but still keeps the energy of the party lively through his work. Late to the party (and not invited) is Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a New Jersey native who just knows she's going to make it in Hollywood ("Ya either a stah or ya ain't! And I'm a stah!"), and whom Manny instantly crushes on.

After a cocaine-binge with Manny, Nellie's go-for-broke dancing at the party attracts the attention of Kinoscope brass, who are in need of an actress on-set the next day—it seems the one they hired has just died upstairs after a drug-fueled micturating display for star Orville Pickwick. By the morning, Nellie's on her way to the Kinoscope set out in the desert, and a drunken Conrad has been driven home by Manny, whom the star immediately makes his assistant ("He can do anything!").

Conrad tells Mannie the movie set is "the most wonderful place in the world," but when Nellie gets there it's anything but. The "studio" is a large field, fenced off to keep the "Hire me" crowd at bay, and there are 10 sets running simultaneously (there's no sound to interfere with silent movies), orchestras playing to provide "mood music" and a sense of chaos going on everywhere. Nellie is shuffled off to make-up, brought back, made up again and then thrown into the shoot, where she acts and dances with abandon, overshadowing the film's star (Samara Weaving). Meanwhile, a hung-over Jack takes Manny to the space where they're making his costume epic with 10 cameras filming a battle scene where the knights are played by skid-row bums off the street. One of them gets killed by running into his own spear.

It's anarchy, but, despite that, sometimes magic happens. When Nellie is asked to cry for a scene, the director (Olivia Hamilton) is amazed that she can produce them on cue. "You think you can cry a little less?" "How many drops and which eye?" Nellie asks, and, as promised, delivers that many drops from that eye. "How do you DO that?" her director asks. "I just think of home." Nellie says matter-of-factly.

You see where this is going: Chazelle the director is in love with "the timeless" image and Chazelle the writer is showing the work, patience, pain, suffering, and craziness employed to achieve it. Even if it kills you. Throughout the time-frame of the movie—1926 through (significantly) 1952—the stars will have their ups and downs, the first become last, the insignificant achieve power, and they all can lose it with a bad headline or a stupid choice...in a land and profession rife with the possibilities of both. Lives and relationships are fragile and are erased and forgotten in the quest for the indelible image made by artifice. 

The advent of talking pictures will be a life and game-changer for the industry. Technicians will be under more pressure, and the performers will have to be all-around actors, not emoters, not just-pretty-faces...and if their voices destroy the illusion the audience has of them, it's a career crusher. We've seen the story before. What Price Hollywood? (or its progeny, the various versions of A Star is Born) The Artist. Truffaut's Day for Night. Bogdanovich's Nickolodeon. Directors get nostalgic for the simpler times of film-making and return to it once they have success. It's as if they have to re-torch the pilot light to remember why they loved making movies in the first place. As the bandleader Sidney Powell says of making movies "I think they got the cameras pointed in the wrong, direction. That's what I think." Directors can't resist the urge of turning the camera.

And there's one more most appropriate example:

 

Singin' in the Rain.

Made in 1952. About the struggles of performers to adjust to "The Talkies." It is no coincidence that Chazelle references it twice in Babylon, and does so directly when Manny goes to see the movie and breaks down in tears. It's a story he lived. But, instead of death and ruin, it's in Technicolor with music and songs and laughs, even in the face of humiliation and tragedy. No one thinks of Clara Bow or John Gilbert or Anna May Wong or "Fatty" Arbuckle while they watch Singin' in the Rain. The film-makers are too good at their jobs. They're having too good a time. If you laugh, the world laughs with you...

Chazelle shopped Babylon around town after Whiplash caused a stir and he was advised it was too big a project too soon. Someone suggested a musical and so he made La La Land, instead—the modern era's version of Singin' in the Rain with music and dancing and aspirations and baked-in nostalgia. But, it's the antithesis of Babylon, just as one could say that, with Babylon, Chazelle made the "anti-Singin' in the Rain," telling the same story, but without the Technicolor-tinted filters, the practiced and fluid choreography, the charm or the illusion. Oh, it's got production value and good performances and period detail and moves like a bat outta hell. It just doesn't leave you with any feelings other than wanting to take a shower.

Babylon tells the story of what happens when you lose success, but, in an unintentionally meta-way, it also tells the story of what can happen if you have too much. You make a bad movie that you think is wonderful and important.

In the pre-showing "vamp", Margot Robbie says she's grateful that Babylon can be seen "as it should be...with an enthused audience." Well, keep wishing, sister.

 

The Dark Knight

The Warner Bros can't seem to catch a break making movies—although "The Sandman" mini-series is very good*—so, let's go back to those halcyon days (or knights) when they seemed to know what they were doing with their DC Comics properties. Like 2008.

Written at the time of the film's release.

"Ya Wanna See an Actor Disappear?"

No, that title is not what you think it is (and shame on you for going there), but Heath Ledger does such a sick, twisted, inspired version of Batman nemesis The Joker, he blows away all pre-conceived notions of the character and his own acting history. Ledger literally gets lost in The Joker, with the smeary, sloppy make-up, his voice that goes from wormy-Richard Dreyfuss to bellowing Ahab-roar (with occasional stops at Bugs Bunny chirpiness), and a gait that sometimes shambles, sometimes totters, sometimes Frankenstein-stomps. All that theatricality is entertaining, but it's the moments of lucidity that are scary. "You're insane!" says Gotham mob-boss Sal Marone (Eric Roberts, doing relaxed, sleazy work), not without reason. "No, I'm not," replies the self-proclaimed Agent of Chaos resignedly. "No...I'm no...tt!"

Ledger's not the only show in town in The Dark Knight. Aaron Eckhart makes a complicated "White Knight" of DA Harvey Dent (it's really his story), Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne and booming Batman are deeper than the portrayal of Batman Begins--more soulful, less Bush-brash--and Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman do able support for roles slightly more down-played than the last film's. This time, Gary Oldman's Lt. Gordon has more to do, and the longer he's on-screen, the better you like him, and Maggie Gyllenhall gives the character of Rachel Dawes more of a spine (with a contrarily slinky walk) than Katie Holmes was able to provide.

The buttoned-up script is full of triangulation. There's the good-guys—Gordon, Dent and Batman—against an Axis of Evil—The Mob, Joker and Chinese financiers (and when one disappears from the screen they're replaced by another). And that's about as black-and-white as things get. Everything else is in convoluted, mordant shades of gray. There's the romantic triangle of Dawes and Dent, with Bruce Wayne as third-wheel. The Batman "team" of Wayne, Alfred and Lucius Fox (all ensconced in the Wayne Enterprises high-rise while Stately Wayne Manor is being rebuilt).

The plot devices are triangulated traps that have an either/or scenario with a third more-horrific option--which becomes The Joker's trademark, ensuring that something bad will happen no matter what. Targets are coordinated in sets, separating the weak from the herd and laying a further trap. It's Joker's way of providing Gotham "a better class of criminal." Batman's vigilantism has made the common petty thief think twice about stepping out of line. Now the Joker sets up elaborate conspiracies that bait and switch and then turn on a dime to a more complicated and deadly resolution.

"You've changed things." he crows at Batman. "There's no going back." When Wayne begins to question whether he needs to take deadlier action because Joker has "crossed the line," Alfred reminds him "You crossed that line first, Master Bruce." Hours before, Wayne had considered giving up the fight with a legitimate civic-minded public figure arriving for Gotham in Dent. Now, he's fighting harder than ever, if only to not step further across that moral line dealing with the new criminal madness. And The Joker? He starts to take actions protecting The Dark Knight, realizing that they can't kill each other: "You.. complete me" he cackles, in one of the chilling laugh-lines he spouts in an interrogation scene.

The Dark Knight ticks along (although it's overlong by half an hour--Director Nolan has a hard time knowing where to stop the escalating madness), with increasingly bizarre acts of cruelty (the film gets a PG-13 only because Nolan cuts away from some of the more grisly aspects--but takes the character design of one iconic Bat-villain in a more charred and eaten-away manner than even the comics devised).

By the end, some of the cast has been culled, and a long entrapment scene has gone on far too long, with still another set-piece just around the corner. At some point, every one of the good guys takes a hit, usually for noble purposes, but each keeps plugging away, trying to prevent having to put tooth-paste back in the tube, as consequence upon consequence piles up. And in the end, The Batman must re-adjust his modus operandi, taking on a new guise in his battle, one that he can only accomplish alone. At the same time, he handicaps himself to ensure he can't cross the line with too much power. He's left running in front of a metaphorical fast-moving train, knowing that at any moment he's going to have to turn and stop it.

"Dark Knight?" This thing is black as pitch.

In fact its relentlessly gloomy, and the sick thing is one looks forward to Ledger showing up for some light sickness to contrast the darkness. In fact, what has distinguished the "Batman 2.0" series of films is how they take the super-hero tropes and make them...practical and familiar. Nolan has kept this film-world translation of Gotham City looking gritty and realistic--far more so than the high-spired, mono-railed futuristic Gotham of Batman Begins--and the feel of the film is of an intricate crime drama, rather than a super-hero epic. The opening bank robbery is a nicely taut set-piece with more than one twist. And Nolan is far more adept at staging his action than previously. But by de-clowning The Joker, one wonders how some of The Dark Knight's three-color villains will translate to this milieu. One wonders where one goes from here. And one anticipates the next installment when this one has ended.

And that's a genuine accomplishment.

* Will I do a review? We-ell, I don't usually do streaming mini-series (although I broke that rule with the old British mini "Edge of Darkness") We shall see. You can dream, can't you?

 

Inherent Vice

Marijuana Jones and the Curse of the Golden Fang
or
"What's Up, Doc?" 

I've never smoked dope. Never been tempted and probably never will be (despite living in one of the—first—two states to legalize its recreational use). When asked why (usually by someone who has and is saying more about themselves than actually caring about the reason) my standard answer is: "The world doesn't need me any more paranoid."

It's a nice laugh line, but it's also true—the world doesn't necessarily need me any more paranoid, but I certainly don't need myself to be. I'm paranoid enough as it is.*

Which brings us to the central conceit of Inherent Vice—a film noir about a stoner detective.**  The thing about film noir (the term—meaning "black film"—coined by French film critics for the pulpy paranoid ambiguously moral post-war films that had a cynical edge to them) is that they're set in a Universe—ours, unfortunately—where unseen forces are in control of things to the detriment of the people too busy with their ordinary lives to notice something wrong.  The best description I've read of film noir is it depicts a world where "the streets are dark with something more than night."***

Precisely. There are things more black than night...especially when it comes to the motivations and the souls of men, the stuff of those "detective" stories with long shadows running through them that hide evil from detection and provide a cloak for those wanting to remain anonymous and invisible.

So, we have a stoner detective, already a little paranoid in how the world works under the influence, operating in the film noir world promoting paranoia on the not-so-grand scale. Seems a natural. ****  And Thomas Pynchon used it for "...Vice," his most accessible novel to date. Paul Thomas Anderson has made a film of it.

I'm not the biggest fan of Paul Thomas Anderson. He's a critical darling (like Quentin Tarantino, but at least P.T. isn't such a snorter of other people's material) which makes me suspicious of him. I rarely find him consistently entertaining, but his films are always interesting...well, filled with interesting ideas, bridged by some meandering sections and extended diversions that test the patience of the viewer. He is, however, never afraid to take on a challenge, even if the reach exceeds his grasp, which is always worth supporting. The works of Thomas Pynchon have never been filmed before...because they are nothing if not a challenge...and his novel of "Inherent Vice" is as close to being movie material as he has come.

It tells the story of LA P.I. Larry "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) who is tasked by ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) with the finding of her current lover Michael Wolfmann (Eric Roberts) who has gone missing. Shasta suspects foul play—not hard to figure out since Wolfmann's wife (Serena Scott Thomas) and her current lover have asked for her cooperation with the enticement of reward, and she's laying low—staying untraceable, just in case.

Doc is not exactly a high roller (although he could easily fit one of those terms separately), having his office in an L.A. free-clinic. Almost immediately, clues start coming in about Wolfmann and his disappearance, and Doc find life getting complicated. His first recce/sortie is to a future Wolfmann development site, which is currently the site for a double-wide "massage parlor" where Doc is knocked unconscious and awakens next to the dead body of Wolfmann's body-guard (or we should say former bodyguard), surrounded by squad cars and the loaded guns of their occupants, led by the humorless presence of Lt. Det. Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen (Josh Brolin), who, along with being a part-time actor, has a checkered history with Doc.

Doc is questioned as a key-witness to the murder, before his lawyer Sauncho Silax, Esq (Benicio Del Toro) shows up to advise (despite specializing in maritime law) and spring him. Doc drifts from person of interest to person of interest—a crack Mom (Jena Malone), her "disappeared" husband (played by Owen Wilson, so obviously he's not disappeared), former clients, white supremacist groups, black activists, a drug cartel called "The Golden Fang," and a society of dentists. Clearly, there's safety in numbers and it's tough out there for a lone wolf like Doc. With all the covert operations and secret societies, professional or otherwise, it only lends to the paranoia associated with the noir world, obscured in shadow and fog, but also by Doc's personal purple haze.

Another aspect of the noir that Pynchon has hit on is the unresolved loose threads of post-war versions. Ever since Chandler and Howard Hawks' presentation of The Big Sleep***** has been the apparent lack of attention to details. Mystery aficionados and fans of Dame Agatha do not appreciate the victims who fall through the cracks, and it can be frustrating for regular audiences, too ("Wait a minute...what happened to....?"). Few questions are answered in Inherent Vice to a consistent degree. This may mar any entertainment value for the casual viewer—you'll also find the tone of the thing different from the comedy tone of the trailer; it's more of a peculiarity than a comedy.

These guys should do a movie together...maybe with music.

Still, I took pleasure in the final shot where Doc is driving through the night, the headlights of the cars behind him illuminating the suspicious squint in his eyes—as fine a visual representation of the mood of noir as I've seen.

Inherent Vice is also the first movie that genuinely gave me the munchies.

* The oldest joke I remember on the subject is "It's a wonder I'm NOT paranoid, what with the whole world against me and everything..."

** Nope.  Don't bring up comparisons to The Big Lebowski, even though its plot resembles that of the Dean of detective novels, Raymond Chandler. Jeff Bridges' "Dude" is not a detective, so much as a righteous man seeking revenge.

*** Raymond Chandler, again, from 1950's "The Simple Art of Murder."

**** I've always wanted to see a production of "Harvey" updated so that Dowd, "Elwood P," doesn't see puca's because of booze, but because of hallucinogens.  I've always imagined Jack Nicholson as Dowd.

***** There is the story where Humphrey Bogart asked Hawks who killed the chauffeur and Hawks couldn't tell him, nor could the screenwriters.  They wired Chandler who claimed it was one character and Hawks remembered that character was someplace else.  "I don't know," said Chandler.