4k-UHD/Movie Review: Babylon

 

Babylon is a 2022 movie about Hollywood in the 1920s starring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, and Li Jun Li in the main roles. It also has a large ensemble supporting cast, including P.J. Byrne, Lukas Haas, Olivia Hamilton, Katherine Waterston, Tobey Maguire (who was also one of the producers), Flea, Eric Robert, Ethan Suplee, Samara Weaving, and Olivia Wille (among others). In it, Pitt plays Jack Conrad, the biggest silent-film star of the time, and Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy, an aspiring actress who gets her big break into silent films when she is seen dancing at a lavish party at the beginning of the film. Calva plays a gopher for the studio who eventually becomes a studio executive after Jack takes him under his wing. Li plays Lady Fay, a cabaret singer who also writes title cards for the silent movies, and Adepo plays a Jazz trumpeter named Sidney Palmer.

The 4K set is a two-disc set with a UHD disc and a regular Blu-Ray disc. The UHD disc just includes the movie, and the regular Blu-Ray disc has the movie and the bonus features. The movie's A/V quality is outstanding. It was shot on film to recreate the look of older Hollywood films, but it looks and sounds great in the UHD format. The extras include a half-hour-long making-of featurette featuring interviews with the cast and crew, about ten minutes of deleted and extended scenes, and a couple of shorter featurettes about the movie's costumes and score. All totaled, the bonus features run about 45 minutes. 

Ultimately, the movie is very good. It starts as a dark comedy and turns into a dark drama by the end. One of the movie's central themes is the transition from the silent movie era to the "talkies," and how adding sound to movies was challenging for the studios and the actors, and how the transition ended some careers and caused others to flourish. The other central theme is the excess of the Roaring 20s, especially in Hollywood. The storyline spans several decades, starting in the 20s and ending in 1952, but most of the movie is set in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It also deals with racism and homophobia. It is absolutely not a family-friendly film, as there is a lot of swearing, drug use, nudity, sex, and smoking throughout. The movie is very long, lasting just over three hours, but does not really drag. It is funny at times, sad at times, and downright weird at others. It is well-written and very well-acted and is absolutely worth watching.