During her recent appearance on the “Talking Pictures” podcast, Margot Robbie expressed her bafflement over the response to her 2022 film “Babylon,” the Damien Chazelle-directed period piece (and follow-up to the filmmaker’s Neil Armstrong drama “First Man”) that also starred Brad Pitt, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, and Jovan Adepo. The Hollywood epic followed silent era movie stars during the 1920s as the film industry struggled to adapt to the transition to talkies. While the somewhat divisive picture has its fair share of defenders (see /Film’s review for more on that) and boasts stunning production values, it was nevertheless a financial bomb that grossed just under $65 million at the global box office against a $110 million budget.
“I love it. I don’t get it either,” said Robbie, commenting on “Babylon” and its box office failure. “I know I am biased because I am very close to the project and I obviously believe in it, but I still can’t figure out why people hated it. I wonder if in 20 years people are going to be like, ‘Wait, ‘Babylon’ didn’t do well at the time?’ Like when you hear that ‘Shawshank Redemption’ was a failure at the time and you’re like, ‘How is that possible?'”
“Babylon” is a perfect example of a blank check movie, the kind of passion project Hollywood only grants every once in a while to directors that’ve had massive success early on in their careers. Sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce, baby. Even when “Babylon” doesn’t work, it’s still an exhilarating display of pure creativity. To quote Mike Shutt’s /Film’s piece “The 2022 Box Office Disappointments We Loved,” the film is “an opulent, cocaine-fueled tale of Hollywood’s transition from silent films to the talkies.” Indeed, “Babylon” is an assault on the senses, and one of the best movies about movies in years, culminating with an ending montage that celebrates the history of the art form by serving as both a love letter and a funeral song for cinema.
Babylon gave us Tobey Maguire as a coke gremlin, and that should be praised
“Babylon” is a bombastic film, one that feels as grand and spectacular yet shallow as the epic debaucheries displayed in the film. It’s also as poignant as watching a montage about the history of movies that ends with a movie reel melting and disintegrating. More than that, “Babylon” is about forced assimilation and identity, people of color having their ideals shattered by the cruel realities of the Hollywood system, and the personal toll taken by the artistry. All the same, it’s a film that believes in the Hollywood fable and the dream of movies.
Most importantly, “Babylon” is a movie that also has Tobey Maguire playing an out-of-left-field, weird with a capital W, bilious, coked-up gremlin that’s the closest thing to a non-CGI Gollum we’ve likely to ever see in a movie. Make no mistake, “Babylon” is all about the contrasts, like the contrast between lavish parties that attract young and idealistic dreamers and the images of actors dying by suicide as the industry goes through an evolution. There’s also the contrast between the fairy-tale like journey to becoming a starlet in Hollywood and the Dantean trip through hell with Maguire’s weirdo as your guide, showing you depraved zoosadist parties and people eating live rats.
“Babylon,” in other words, is pure cinema, the whole Hollywood experience. Robbie is also right that it should’ve been a hit and may yet come to be considered a classic in the years ahead.
This post was originally published on here
