Babylon or the tribute to cinema

Babylon, the new movie of the French American producer Damien Chazelle is a pure masterpiece of the beginning of 2023. The movie already had 900.000 spectators since the beginning of the screenings in December 2022 in the USA and in the French silver screens since mid-January 2023.

 This movie start to take place during the Roaring 1920's with a big party with the big names of cinema - which look like Dionysus's party with a lot of explicit content in the background - where all the main protagonists will be; Nelly and Manuel who dream to be a part of this universe will have their dreams realized by the end of this party thanks to their luck because they were at the right place at the right time, but they will both fall because of Nelly's appetite for the game and her father's inability to manage her money and Manny loves for her who will try to help her because he is unable to control his love for her.

This movie show us how the industry of cinema dealt from the mute to the sound - the first main change in this industry - and makes us rethink the actual change that we are dealing with due to the pandemic, cinema has to change itself at every big event to keep the spectators in front of the silver screen. Damien Chazelle wanted to reassure us with this movie to tell us that this change is normal and the industry will take some time to adapt itself like it has always done since its creation.

Babylon also thanks the actors to make us dream and tell them that they will be remembered throughout their movies and never die in them, like Elinor St. John, a cinema critic, told Jack Conrad. Elinor also told him - while he wanted to know why his career was over -  by using the image of a burning house - the humans who live in them will die because they don't know they are useless even if they are seen and known to live in it and the cockroaches, who knows that they are useless in the house, will not because they know that the house will not remain - that the actors careers are not eternal but the critics will not fall because they don't show themselves, they are in the shadow of the actors - this moment made me have a tear because I felt that she was right deep inside me. The spectators see a reference to Elinor's words at the end of the movie when Manny came back to Los Angeles with his family and went to the cinema alone and start to cry when he sees movies which refers to his lost love Nelly; at this moment the spectators see a lot of colorful flashes - epileptic people have to be cautious at this moment- and extract from movies, old and those who were not yet released in the 1950's, to finally come back to Manny who realize that she still lives through her movies and she left the movies she played in to lead to a better cinema industry and make people dream bigger after her death.

 

4.8/5, it is a quite long movie that is why I don't give a perfect note. There are also some scenes which are useless to the narration which were not necessary to the final editing because they slow the proceedings of the events.

 

See you next week for the next article.