We've been waiting for it! In just three films, Damien Chazelle has established himself as one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation, and even became the youngest winner of the Best DirectorOscar. His latest feature, Babylon, is even more ambitious. A three-hour fresco on the beginnings of talking pictures, it will be, for the second time after First Man, a historical film . The film will be broadcast on television this Saturday, October 14, at 11:20 pm on Canal+.
Damien Chazelle's ambition is also evident in the film's impressive cast. Around the main character, played by Mexican Diego Calva, whose first film in the United States, we'll find a host of huge Hollywood stars, playing real or fictional figures from 1930s Hollywood. These include Brad Pitt(Bullet Train, Once upon a Time in Hollywood, Ad Astra), Margot Robbie(Barbie, The Suicide Squad, The Wolf of Wall Street), Tobey Maguire(Spider-Man, Gatsby the Magnificent, Brothers) and many others.
Our opinion of Babylon:
With a long introductory sequence inside a Gatsby the Magnificent-style party of excess, Damien Chazelle introduces all his characters and issues: the spectator is plunged into the upper crust of 1920s Hollywood, its first golden age, where stars are veritable gods and alcohol and drugs flow freely. It's pure lust, and those who don't belong to this world will do anything to get close to it, even if it means degrading themselves. It's also the perfect opportunity for filmmaker Damien Chazelle to prove that he's lost none of his talent: as virtuoso with his camera as ever, he's a master of the sequence shot and has an absolutely prodigious sense of rhythm. After this introductory party, there's no doubt about it: Babylon is a great masterpiece, and the three hours that follow keep proving it.
With this film, Chazelle wants to celebrate the magic of cinema, of all cinema. But it's also an acerbic portrait of this milieu, which makes and breaks stars at the snap of a finger, and perverts even the noblest. Hollywood is portrayed as the worst of the mafias, where the arrival of sound in films has turned everything upside down. Forced to become more respectable, stars and films alike are becoming smoother and more appealing, even if it means losing everything that made them so magical. One might see this as negativity, a reproach by Damien Chazelle, even regrets, of a bygone world, but the whole form of the film cries out the opposite. Babylon is much more than a nostalgic eulogy of a bygone era; it's a declaration of love for the seventh art, which he sees as the best possible refuge.
Once again, Chazelle delivers an authentic masterpiece, an immense film with many themes and brilliant actors. It's impressive from start to finish, and despite its three-hour running time, we'd like the show to go on.
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