Babylon 2025

Description

Babylon is an American epic historical black comedy-drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle.

It features an ensemble cast that includes Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo and Li Jun Li. It chronicles the rise and fall of multiple characters during Hollywood’s transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s.

Chazelle began developing Babylon in July 2019, with Lionsgate Films as the frontrunner to acquire the project. It was announced that Paramount Pictures had acquired worldwide rights in November 2019. Much of the main cast joined the project between January 2020 and August 2021, and filming took place in Los Angeles from July to October 2021.

Babylon premiered at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles on November 14, 2022, and was released in the United States on December 23, 2022.

It was met with a polarized response from critics and was a box-office bomb, grossing $63 million against a production budget of $78–80 million and losing Paramount $87 million. It received five nominations at the 80th Golden Globe Awards (including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, winning Best Original Score), three nominations at the 76th British Academy Film Awards (winning Best Production Design) and three nominations at the 95th Academy Awards.

In Bel Air, 1926, Manuel « Manny » Torres organizes the haphazard transport of an elephant to a debauched bacchanal at the mansion of his employer, Kinoscope Studios boss Don Wallach. Witnessing this event rife with sex, jazz, and cocaine, Manny becomes smitten with Nellie LaRoy, a brash, ambitious self-declared « star » from New Jersey. Himself the son of impoverished Mexican refugees, Manny shares his dream with her—to be part of something « bigger ». He helps carry away young actress Jane Thornton, who overdosed on drugs with actor Orville Pickwick, having the elephant walk through to distract partygoers.

Also attending are Chinese-American gay cabaret-singer Lady Fay Zhu and African-American jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer. The flamboyantly-dancing Nellie is spotted and swiftly recruited to replace Jane in a Kinoscope film. During filming, she crudely upstages Constance Moore. Manny becomes a personal assistant to the benevolent, oft-married film star Jack Conrad who helps him secure Kinoscope assistant jobs. When a camera is urgently needed for one of Jack’s scenes before nightfall, Manny procures it at the last moment, helping him climb the studio system‘s ranks.

Nellie becomes an « it girl » covered by gossip columnist Elinor St. John, who also follows Jack’s career. As sound film displaces silents in the late-1920s, Manny skillfully adapts to the changes. At Sidney’s suggestion, he pitches films starring Sidney’s orchestra to Irving Thalberg and becomes a studio executive. Nellie struggles to navigate sound film’s demands (one cameraman dies filming her), and increases her drug use and gambling, tarnishing her reputation, despite Manny’s assistance.

Nellie, shown to have an institutionalized mother, eggs on her drunken father (and inept business manager) Robert to fight a rattlesnake at a party; he passes out. Nellie fights the snake, which bites her neck; Fay kills it and sucks out the venom. Nellie passionately kisses her.

By 1932, Jack’s popularity is waning but he still finds work in low-budget Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films. As Hollywood’s audience becomes less tolerant of libertine behavior, executives order Manny to fire Fay, a Kinoscope title-writer, because she is a lesbian. While practicing lines with new wife Estelle, Jack is devastated to learn his longtime friend/producer, George Munn, has committed suicide.

Elinor and Manny try to revamp Nellie’s image and get her into high society, but Nellie lashes out against upper-class snobbery at a party, demonstratively vomiting on William Randolph Hearst. Jack confronts Elinor over her cover story on his declining popularity; she explains that his star has faded, but he will be immortalized on film.

Comparatively light-skinned Sidney is offended when studio executives insist he don blackface to assuage Southern audiences’ aversion to interracial orchestras; he leaves Kinoscope to perform live in black establishments. Jack encounters Fay at a hotel party; she reveals her departure for Europe and Pathé. After returning to his hotel room, a despondent Jack shoots himself dead.

Eccentric gangster James McKay threatens Nellie’s life over her gambling debts. Manny rejects her pleas for help, but later secures funds from the movie-set drug-pusher/aspiring actor « The Count », and visits James with him to pay the debts. Manny panics upon learning the money is counterfeit, made by his prop-maker. Raving about potential film ideas, the gangster drags them along to a subterranean gathering space for depraved zoosadist parties. When he realizes the cash is counterfeit, the two are about to get shot but escape, killing James’s henchman Wilson.

Manny asks Nellie to flee with him to Mexico, marry and start a new life; she eventually agrees. James’s associate finds Manny, killing The Count and his roommate. When a terrified Manny loses control of his bladder, the hitman spares him on condition he leaves Los Angeles. While Manny gathers their belongings, Nellie reneges on her decision, dancing away into the night. A montage of newspaper clippings reveals Elinor’s death at 76 and Nellie’s death from a drug overdose at 34.

In 1952, Manny returns to California with his wife Silvia and young daughter, having fled to New York City and established a radio shop. He shows them the Kinoscope Studios entrance, then visits a nearby cinema alone to see Singin’ in the Rain, whose depiction of the industry’s transition from silents to talkies, albeit sanitized, moves him to tears. A century-spanning series of vignettes from various films follows. As the focus returns to Singin’, Manny tearfully smiles.