‘Babylon’ First Look Teases One of the Craziest Spectacles of the Year in New Film by Damien Chazelle
Behold, one of the most likely contenders for Best Picture at the Oscars. Even before seeing a frame of footage, Damien Chazelle’s new movie Babylon has been captivating the imagination of awards experts and enthusiasts for a long time. Now, the marketing campaign is finally underway.
The movie will have a small theatrical run on Christmas Day this year, and will expand nationwide on January 6, 2023. Overseas release dates are still in flux. While the movie was not submitted to any film festival this fall (so far, at least), Chazelle will be present at TIFF for a panel titled “In Conversation With… Damien Chazelle” on September 12. He is already a veteran of film festivals, having presented Grand Piano at Fantastic Fest, Whiplash at Sundance, and both La La Land and First Man at Venice. (The former would also win People’s Choice Award at TIFF in 2016.) In his panel at this year’s TIFF edition, he will be introducing for the first time to audiences footage from Babylon, which probably means a trailer will debut online that day. Meanwhile, however, Vanity Fair has released the first-ever look at the film, with ten exclusive pictures and an interview with the writer/director.
Babylon stars Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy, “a scrappy aspiring actress who’s an amalgam of early stars like Clara Bow, Jeanne Eagels, Joan Crawford, and Alma Rubens”, and Brad Pitt as Jack Conrad, “a hard-partying ‘über-movie star’, inspired by the likes of John Gilbert, Clark Gable, and Douglas Fairbanks.” Both actors have a lot in common with their on-screen roles — LaRoy, much like Margot Robbie right after The Wolf of Wall Street, is a newcomer to Hollywood that has risen to stardom overnight. Chazelle said the following about her:
“Margot as a person has this—it’s a very Australian sort of thing—brash, bold, hungry kind of edge to her that she was really able to tap into and do a lot of really fun things with,”
Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy in Babylon
Pitt, however, plays a character that is thinking about his contribution to the world and what else is left for him to do (a sentiment the actor himself shared in a recent GQ cover story). Chazelle said the following about him:
“He’s reaching a point in his life in his career where he’s starting to look back and starting to wonder what’s ahead.”
Brad Pitt as Jack Conrad in Babylon
The two of them are joined by newcomer Diego Calva, who plays Manny Torres, a Mexican immigrant who, as an outsider in Hollywood, serves as the audience’s eyes in the world of Babylon. Reports point to Calva playing the lead male role, with Pitt being the supporting male actor in the movie. Chazelle had the following to say about him:
“In many ways, he was going through a very similar experience to the character he was playing as well, of just stumbling on a larger-than-life campus and going, ‘What the fuck is going on?’”
Diego Calva as Manny Torres in Babylon
Babylon is set in Los Angeles in the 1920s, as the city is rapidly transforming into a metropolis and cinema is moving on from silent films and embracing sound. Chazelle introduced the idea of the movie as follows to Vanity Fair:
“The basic idea was just to do a big, epic, multicharacter movie, set in these early days of Los Angeles and Hollywood, when both of these things were coming into what we now think of them as.”
It might be Chazelle’s most ambitious film yet — one of the craziest (and probably most accurate) depictions of his beloved city, to which he wrote a love letter in La La Land, during some of its craziest years. He even told Vanity Fair that he kept putting it off after having the idea in his head for a long time “because it was just a little too massive.” Underneath all the glamour, fame, and flashiness, the movie depicts a city that is also afraid of change. Said the writer/director:
“Everything is shifting underneath people’s feet, and I became really fascinated by the human cost of disruption at that magnitude, at a time when there was no road map, when everything was just new and wild.”
To tell the story, Chazelle was helped by a very talented supporting cast, which includes Li Jun Li as Lady Fay Zhu, Jean Smart as Elinor St. John (early buzz points towards a Best Supporting Actress nomination), Jovan Adepo as Sidney Palmer, and Tobey Maguire as James McKay. Not mentioned by Vanity Fair, the movie also reportedly includes Olivia Wilde, Flea, from Red Hot Chili Peppers, Samara Weaving, Spike Jonze, Katherine Waterston, and more.
Tobey Maguire in Babylon
Even though all characters in the movie are original, it has been rumored for a while that Robbie’s character would be classic film actress Clara Bow (Wings), and Maguire would be playing Charlie Chaplin. That is most definitely not the case. (A leaked screenplay from the time Emma Stone was attached to play the lead role confirmed that it was Clara Bow, and Maguire’s part was widely reported after CinemaCon early this year.)
Jean Smart and Diego Calva in Babylon
Chazelle is surrounding himself with his frequent collaborators. Linus Sandgren, who won an Oscar for La La Land, is back as the cinematographer, with Justin Hurwitz (another Oscar winner from La La Land) back as the composer and Tom Cross (who was nominated for La La Land) as editor.
Jovan Adepo as Sidney Palmer in Babylon
So far, Babylon looks like it will give The Fabelmans a run for its money as the most nominated film of the year. Multiple acting nominations are expected, in addition to writing, directing, and picture. And from the looks of it, it seems like cinematography, production design, costume design, and maybe other technical ones like editing, sound, and score, are locks for a nomination as well.
Stay tuned, it is going to be a fascinating Awards season!
Damien Chazelle on the set of Babylon
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
