The story of "Babylon" has been brewing in the mind of director Damien Chazelet for years, but many times he can only face blank pages on the computer screen and cannot write the first lines of the script. "It's like a mountain, I keep forcing myself to climb it, but I always give up."
Chazelet understood that the problem was that he was not familiar enough with the era in which the story took place. He began to tirelessly look up information, watch movies, integrate the material little by little, and gradually knead into the DNA of "Babylon".
Ten years after his initial conception, he finally began writing the screenplay, determined to recreate an era that haunted him.
This is the 1920s-1930s in Hollywood. At a time when silent films were still in their prime, but they were nearing their end, and 1927's "The Jazz Singer" marked the arrival of sound films, revolutionizing the film industry and art.
"Babylon" portrays up to seven main characters and multiple supporting characters, using a crisscrossing group drama story line to paint a picture of Hollywood's ukiyo-e era from silent to sound film. Such a broad narrative structure also makes the advantages and disadvantages of this film.
"Babylon" is a comprehensive and accurate restoration of history, not only showing the colorful surface, but also capturing the deep atmosphere. However, the story line is spread too widely, which also makes the character portrayal inadequate. Although the movie is 188 minutes long, none of the characters' stories are full and profound.
Overall, the story of each protagonist of "Babylon" can be summed up as the price to pay for pursuing an artistic career. No matter how much glory there is, the ending of each filmmaker in the film is shattered dreams, faded brilliance, and scarred. This is in line with Chazelle's two masterpieces "Burst Drummer" and "La La Land". He is obsessed with portraying the trauma and fall of artistic dreamers.
Faced with familiar core themes, Chazelé failed to present the emotional impact of the first two works in "Babylon".
Chazelle said he likes to write about experiences and feelings he's had firsthand. He also tends to incorporate this creative approach into stories that have nothing to do with his own experiences. However, the distance between the author and the material still creates an emotional gap, which is especially evident in Babylon.
Even with similar stories, "Babylon" lacks the touching touch of the personal stories of "The Burst Drummer" and "La La Land". The Drummer and The Philharmonic can really feel Chazelet's own emotional integration, while Babylon is more like a richly detailed, richly colored banner scroll, each part is technically perfect, but lacks the finishing touch.
The portrayal of the characters in "Babylon" seems to be comprehensive, but in fact, it is superficial and slightly old-fashioned.
Nellie, Jack and Juphie, as representatives of movie stars, all declined with the transition from silent films to sound films, and this kind of plot can be seen everywhere in films about Hollywood history.
Mexican-American producer Manny and black jazz musician Sidney are both staging a grassroots backlash by minorities, an overly routine American dream story.
The female director Ruth and the female screenwriter Eleanor have a clear image, but the scenes are less than other protagonists and lack deep digging.
Although the love line between Manny and Nellie highlights their respective identities and personalities, it is also a metaphor for Manny's fan complex (Manny is like Chazelet's own avatar, a fan youth, Nelly is as irresistible to him as a screen goddess), but the development and change of the relationship between the two has always been predictable and boring, and lacks moving power.
To sum up, "Babylon" is at best modest and even slightly mediocre at the level of characters and stories. However, this does not hide the merits of this film. In fact, Chazelle's films have never been just about stories. "Burst Drummer" and "La La Land" don't win with the profound richness of the story.
What really makes Chazelet stand out and become the first director of Hollywood's new generation is his creativity in expression. "Burst Drummer" takes a musical story as gripping as an action thriller. "La La Land" is not only a tribute to the classic Hollywood song and dance films, but also completes the upgrade of traditional song and dance films in terms of audiovisual and drama.
Similarly, "Babylon" has also achieved amazing accuracy and breadth in the examination and restoration of the era of Hollywood silent film transformation to sound film. Chazelé also created a novel form of expression that magnifies the age infinitely.
Each major character in Babylon has a real historical archetype reference. Some are a single person, some are a combination of multiple people, and some are symbols of a group.
Nelly is based on Clara Powell, an actress in the Hollywood silent film era. Bao's family was poor, his mother was schizophrenic, and his father was alcoholic and violent. She became a screen icon by struggle and opportunity, and her biggest charm to attract the audience was her civilian and rebellious temperament. She shows the beauty of ordinary people and rebellion against the upper class in her films, and is loved by the working class.
Nellie's image and experience in the film correspond to Baudo. Several key passages in her plot—controlled tears during filming, complicated relationships with parents, offense to upper-class classes—are designed based on Bao's life.
Clara Bow and Nelly in the film
In addition, the film also shows Nellie and Juphie's homosexual relationship.
This is both a reference to the rumors of Bao's sexual orientation in reality, and also intended to show the sexual openness of Hollywood at that time. Homosexuality is taboo in mainstream American society, but it is not uncommon in Hollywood.
In fact, not only sexual concepts, but also the atmosphere of Hollywood at that time was more inclusive and open than mainstream American society in terms of gender and race, which was also fully reflected in the film. A large number of white women are engaged in important creative jobs such as directing, producing, and screenwriting, almost as many as they are now.
"Babylon" portrays female director Ruth and female screenwriter Eleanor as representatives. The former is based on Dorothy Azna, the latter by Eleanor Glean. They were both well-known filmmakers in the 1920s and 1930s and worked closely with Bao . Azna directed 20 films between 1927 and 1943.
Azna and Ruth in the film
There's a funny scene in "Babylon" that is a joke that Ruth and Nelly make when they work together on their first sound film. This is a tribute to Bao and Azna's first sound film, "The Wild Banquet".
"Picnic Banquet"
Grace is the original author and screenwriter of Bao's most famous work, "It". She used this film to portray the rebellious girl of Bao Commoner, and her other screenwriting works have also produced many silent film stars (such as Rudolf Valentino, Gloria Swanson).
Gleane and Eleanor in the film
Zhu Fei in "Babylon" is a dual representative of ethnic minorities and female filmmakers, and the prototype is Chinese actress Huang Liushuang.
Huang Liu Shuang's family runs a laundry in Los Angeles. Although Hollywood rose to prominence in the 1920s, Wong was increasingly plagued by Asian stereotypes and racial discrimination.
In particular, the introduction of the "Hays Code" censorship imposed strict restrictions on the racial mixing of film characters, which made Huang Liushuang's career more difficult. She therefore chose to go to Europe in the late 1920s. Juphie recreates these backgrounds and experiences in the film.
Huang Liu Shuang and Zhu Fei
Similar to Juphie, Manny and Sidney are symbols of minority groups.
As of Mexican descent, Manny was based on a group of Latino filmmakers who were active in Hollywood at the time. Like Manny, most of them came to the United States through immigration and entered the film industry without any background to become directors, actors or producers.
Many of them also deliberately concealed their third-world origins after their success, as Manny falsely claimed in the film that his last name came from Madrid, Spain.
As a black jazz musician, Sidney was promoted to actor when sound films first appeared, which is also a reflection of real history. At that time, studios wanted to highlight the characteristics of sound films by performing music, and jazz was the most popular type of music. This gave more and more black musicians the opportunity to appear on the screen.
In a sharp scene in the film, Manny is forced by his boss to ask Sidney to blacken his face when acting in order to satisfy the white audience's stereotype of black people. This alludes to a similar incident that occurred during the filming of the 1933 film King Jones.
Brad Pitt's Jack Conrad is based on John Gilbert.
One of Hollywood's biggest male stars in the silent film era, Gilbert was married to four actresses. His iconic screen image is a love saint in costume films, and this has become a bottleneck that he cannot break through.
After the advent of sound films, his transformation failed, and his career took a sharp turn. These experiences are reproduced in many of Jack's story lines in the film.
Gilbert and Jack in the film
In addition to the character prototype, Chazelé also realistically recreated the alcohol and drug epidemic in Hollywood and the violence in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s.
At that time, the United States was still in the period of prohibition, which made people crave alcohol more. Not only are drugs readily available, restrictions are lax, and people use them sparingly.
As a profiteering industry that has emerged in a short period of time, it is not surprising that Hollywood is intoxicated with alcohol and drugs. The opening dance of "Babylon" is a vivid portrayal.
At the time of "Babylon", Los Angeles was flooded with poor immigrants from all over the world, while poor law laws and a proliferation of guns made it one of the most robbery and murderous cities in the United States.
This violent atmosphere is fully reflected in the later part of the film where Manny clashes with the casino owner played by Tobey Maguire (who is also a real historical figure).
From the perspective of the story, this plot seems to be separated from the whole, but it still has indispensable significance in the restoration of the atmosphere of the times.
On top of rigorous research, the audiovisual style of "Babylon" also reflects Chazelre's unique creativity. He used the technique of song and dance to make a feature film without song and dance.
"Babylon" is more than three hours, but it can clearly divide several large climactic passages.
These passages are mostly presented with moving long shots and multi-space parallel cross-editing, scene scheduling, character movements, music and editing are all brisk and energetic, just like dances in a song and dance film. The connection between the climactic passages returns to the flat rhythm of the feature film.
This structure is similar to that of a song and dance film.
The song and dance qualities of the climactic passages greatly speed up the pace of the film, and the length of more than three hours seems as relaxing as two hours. More importantly, the characteristics of song and dance complement the restoration of the atmosphere of the times in the whole film, and the water and milk are blended.
The vibrant energy of song and dance urges adrenaline secretion to the extreme, making people unconsciously excited and restless, which reflects the vigorous creativity of Hollywood at that time. Cinema, the most emerging art, has given birth to a dream paradise of free ideals, where all possibilities can be realized.
At the same time, the carnival atmosphere of song and dance also makes all the glory exude a kind of glitz and confusion, as if the illusion created by alcohol and drugs, and all the brilliance is also a bubble that may burst at any time.
Music and song and dance have always been an inseparable complex for Chazelle. He used to send each draft of the script to long-term composer Justin Helwitz as soon as it was completed, asking him to write a musical sample and then design the storyboard according to the music.
Chazelet even stressed that it was difficult for him to create without music. This is where the character of "Babylon" musical and dancing film comes from.
Babylon is not perfect, but unique enough. Its advantages and disadvantages are clear. Usually the film of an era is restored by group drama, and its success or failure depends on the fullness and depth of the characters and story, and "Babylon" is not good in this regard.
However, the spirit of tracing back to the origin allows each character and each plot to reflect a side of Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s, and together it creates a period style painting.
The innovation of the form of shooting feature films in the style of song and dance films makes the atmosphere of the times overflow in every frame of the film. I have to admit that in terms of reproducing the macro-historical picture, "Babylon" is indeed a masterpiece.