More to the point, it’s the kind of movie that Chazelle reveres but, endearingly, can’t quite bring himself to make, even with a bottomless reservoir of talent at his disposal, and a blank check to rewrite history.ĭespite his well-documented affection for jazz (which is more palpable than ever in the syncopated rhythms of this sweaty new swing for the fences), the “La La Land” director is too good a student to follow the notes off the page and create anything so violently new with them, even if “Babylon” finds him remixing old Hollywood with his usual flair.
If “The Jazz Singer” is the kind of movie that the cast of “Babylon” can’t see coming, “Breathless” is the kind of movie they can’t even begin to imagine. That’s not because Chazelle’s end times Hollywood spectacle channels the free-wheeling anarchy of the French New Wave, but rather because it doesn’t. Of all the people lost and gone to whom “Babylon” pays its own form of tribute, Jean-Luc Godard - an unavoidable touchstone for any film so concerned with the fin de cinéma - is perhaps the most instructive. But as the hyper-focused ecstasy of the movie’s first half gives way to the meandering death march of its second, it’s hard not to wonder what “Babylon” is giving back to its medium in return.
That’s just a tiny sample of the films that “Babylon” references, borrows from, or alludes to over the course of its 188-minute running time, as Chazelle’s anachronistic touchstones eventually become so vast and overt that they threaten to spill out across the screen. Where to Watch This Week’s New Movies, from ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
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