by Damien Chazelle Babylon It’s a celebration of cinema and film history, but it’s not just a love letter; it’s a representation of warts and all. There’s a lot of fun and excess, but also a lot of tragedy and death. The film sheds light on the difficulties of being an actor in the industry and made me wonder how stars personally thought about representation in relation to their own careers in modern Hollywood.
I interviewed Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo and Li Jun Li earlier this month during the Los Angeles press day for Babylon, and one question I asked all of the actors was how they deal with the sad lives of the characters on screen in the face of the hardships of the industry. Pitt, who plays Jack Conrad, an actor whose star begins to fade in the transition from silent to spoken, thought the protagonists’ “messy” lives reflected more the overall human experience than mere actors, though he acknowledged that the stars of the 1920s and 1930s lived life a little less responsibly:
We were talking about it. I mean, humans are messy. We’re wonderful, we’re awful, and it gets complicated, and we’re everywhere. So I think, you know, it’s the same no matter what kind of environment you land in. I haven’t experienced any dysfunction to the extent of any of this, except perhaps in my younger years. When people who were starting out were a little more adventurous.
Following her co-star’s comments, Margot Robbie noted some of the craziness of real life as shown Babylon to young people in the sector, in many respects. Searching for him led her to the realization that booming film studios were run by people in their 30s, and that there was a level of shock that came as lives changed overnight. she explained,
You start investigating some people, Damien [Chazelle] pointed out to us, and you begin to accumulate how many people died very young at the time, and how young everyone was in general: people who ran studios at 35 and people who went from being very poor to being the greatest film stars of the world. country, how so fast! And they were 20 years old, and then they died when they were 25, 30 years old. It was kind of crazy and it was like, at that point, everyone had a sort of “live fast, die young” kind of vibe. I don’t think that’s the case now for various reasons; the sector has evolved. But yeah, it was a crazy time. I don’t think it’s exactly the same thing.
One thing that has certainly helped Hollywood learn from history. The characters played by Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in Babylon they’re fictional, but they’re essentially amalgamations of real people, and in some cases those people can be seen as cautionary tales. The industry is still plagued by all kinds of similar scandals from the first half of the 20th century, but things are certainly different now.
With Li Jun Li, Jovan Adepo was able to find connections between the experience of being an actor today versus the time of Babylon – even if he’s more focused on being on set. In the film, there’s a sequence where Margot Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy films her first walkie-talkie performance, and the gentle sound ramps up the heat when the production is forced to do some reshoots. Adepo can tell, saying,
It’s not about facing the fear, it’s about seeing the things they were dealing with back then and noticing how they still exist today, especially like the sound issue and the issue of trying to get the lighting right. .
With an exceptional cast that also includes Jean Smart, Tobey Maguire, Lukas Haas, Max Minghella and Olivia Hamilton, Babylon It’s now playing in theaters across the country and has certainly sparked a lot of conversation. After watching the film, check out our analysis of the ending and she hears ReelBlend’s new interview with writer/director Damien Chazelle.
To preview all the exciting movies currently scheduled with release dates for next year, check out our 2023 Movie Release Schedule.
Source: Cinemablend
