Babylon is a period epic written and directed by Damien Chazelle so that’s already enough of a reason to at least give this a chance. It also stars an ensemble cast of which is probably one of the most stacked casts i’ve ever seen; Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, P.j Byrne, Li Jun Li, Tobey Maguire, Eric Roberts, Olivia Wilde and Samara Weaving to name a few even if some only show up for mere minutes the cast is undeniably insane.
The plot in a nutshell is the story of the transition in Hollywood from silent films to sound films and somehow it manages to take something so simple and to most people something quite uninteresting into something I could not take my eyes away from and in as little words as possible I will try to explain why.
Damien Chazelle is one of my favourite film makers mostly because of his style within his film making with his fast snappy editing and his classic side to side camera whips it immediately makes his work stand out from anything else on screen, i could go into a Damien Chazelle film totally blind and instantly know it was a movie of his and that in itself is talent.
So needless to say when I first watched Babylon I was excited but also kind of worried as I heard early reviews that the movie was kind of a mess. Was this Chazelle’s first dud?
Babylon hands down is my contender for film of the year. It was the second film I watched in 2023 and straight away I knew it was one of my favourites of the year and on a second watch I knew it was one of my favourites full stop. Babylon is a masterpiece of cinema, I’m sorry critics but you are wrong.
Babylon shines in everything it tries to do, its direction, its set pieces, its performances and its story. As bonkers as it is, this is some of the best I have ever seen. This movie never slows down from the opening scene to the closing credits, it never takes a breath. Though it may be a little too much for some sure, for me the fast paced story telling paired with Chazelle’s high octane direction and over the top characters and ‘THE’ best soundtrack in recent memory babylon kept me smiling ear to ear all the way through.
Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt are always a sure fire bet they steal every scene they are in and throughout Babylon they constantly provide enough evidence that they are among the best A-listers out there even if the material they are provided with is absolute garbage, they always manage to pull out a somewhat decent performance. But Babylon gives them the material they need to not only put out a flawless performance, it gives them and everyone in the movie the material to give their best performance yet. Everyone in this movie in top form for the whole 3 hour run time every single actor/extra (yes they do so much in this films the party scene in the opening half hour was insane) deserves an award of some form of recognition as there has never been so much talent oozing out of the screen
As for the direction and everything else, it’s just a beautiful piece of film as mentioned before everything about this movie is flawless it’s non stop entertainment from start to finish, Chazelle has proved on multiple occasions he knows how to direct, he knows how to write, and more than anything he knows how to impress, the last 10 minutes of this movie literally had me in tears solely over the visual of what i was seeing. there wasn’t anything tugging at my heart strings no hamfisted oscar bait look at me we’re being emotional garbage give me an oscar scenes here. Just utter visual, audible perfection.
I’m going to cut this review short because it honestly blew me away and if I don’t stop here this review is going to be my longest yet. Damien Chazelle has crafted possibly his best work yet and I don’t understand why it’s got such a mixed critic and audience score on RT. It’s been a long time since something has genuinely taken my breath away and Babylon was and will remain one of my favourite cinema experiences and one I wont ever forget.
Final Score
Title: Masterpiece
“Damien Chazelle’s Babylon has phenomenal form in everything; Acting, Direction, Story telling, Production design, and an unmatched music score and it all comes together to create the greatest epic piece I have ever seen. Perfection, Bonkers and Breathtaking nothing more, Nothing less.”
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