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All great directors are perverts.
It isnt exactly escape so much as reflection, warped by the pleasure principle.
For now, hes transporting an elephant to a party hosted by the mogul he works for.
Chazelle quickly plunges us into a world of excess and the people who inhabit it with a hedonistic soiree.
Bodies in fine outfits, or entirely nude, sweat and gyrate within a warm amber glow.
You either are one or you aint, she remarks.
Isnt that a requirement for a matinee idol?
He rolls up to the party, top down, arguing with his wife (Olivia Wilde).
When she announces theyre getting a divorce, Jack is barely fazed.
Hell go in and out of marriages throughout the films meaty run time.
Theres always more women.
Desires can never be met, only endlessly fed.
Gin, lemon, Kina Lillet, with a dash of absinthe.
Two of those, Jack says.
There are other moments of quietude amid the feverish pace of the film.
Chazelle delights in such contrasts the chaotic and the still, the virulent and the divine.
She exists in a liminal space in the industry known but not wholly respected or honored for her talent.
She often writes titles for the films she fails to land auditions for.
She gives the money she earns to her parents.
But at the party, shes something more.
Shes a star as soon as her heels click against hardwood.
Her gloved hand holds a cigarette to her lips and smoke dances along the shadows of her exquisite profile.
Sure, there are characters fucking in a variety of positions, sometimes wearing a fake donkey head.
(Notably, we dont see any of the main characters having sex.
Thats for extras.)
Consider an early sequence inBabyloninvolving Spike Jonze as an intense German director, Otto.
Meanwhile, Nellie gets her debut on another set, taking the place of the woman who overdosed.
But back on Ottos set, those mistakes abound.
As if fated, a butterfly dances in the air before delicately landing on Jacks shoulder.
We got it, Otto says, at almost a whisper.
Babyloncan be transfixing, before a feeling that the film is too polished, too neat, takes hold.
The cinematography balances warmth and cloying darkness, communicating the delights and horrors in which characters are mired.
The music carries itself with hard-won panache.
The actors are game.
As the film marches deeper into the sound era, the lives of its main characters take bitter turns.
I will shit in your mouth!
Jack, on the other hand, is fighting against the inevitable: his own irrelevance.
America is a country built on forgetting its own sins, and Hollywood has inherited that forgetfulness.
This is never more apparent than when Hollywood is playing itself.
Your time has run out.
[…] Its over.
No one asks to be left behind.
You see what that means?
Youve been given a gift.
Youll spend eternity with angels and ghosts.
But this scene worked for me, tapping into a somber quality that is wistful and nostalgic.
