![]() Namely: Is writer-director Ari Aster okay? And what’s going on in the film’s crazy ending? The picture is structured as an existential mystery, always on the verge of delivering some big revelation that will clarify the insanity we’ve been watching. Regardless of whether you think it’s a masterpiece or a career-ending crime against cinema, Beau Is Afraid will leave you with a lot of questions. Spoilers ahead for the plot and ending of Beau Is Afraid. We are recirculating it now that Beau Is Afraid is available on digital. A wordless scene that, finally, lets a little silence do all the talking.This piece was originally published in April. The montage transmits something into Calva’s performance, as though Manny is somehow aware of the broader changes to come. He’s watching in awe now, moved by the story playing out in front of him. It’s also a far cry from the restrained, original ending in the (alleged!) leaked script: Manny crying happy tears, smiling as hears Kelly perform “Singin’ in the Rain.” (Another nod to the meta ending of the 1952 film, which closes with Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds’s characters starring in a movie called Singin’ in the Rain.)īut after the thunderous montage, the film does, thankfully, return to Manny. ![]() (And reminds me of an old Wong Kar Wai quote: “Seeing too much is seeing nothing.”) It’s all too excessive (for this writer, anyway) to land on the sweeping, emotional note he’s trying to strike. All the while, it’s interspersed with flashes of color and inky dye clouds, celebrating the development process that shook color into the black-and-white era.Ĭhazelle, the nerdy patron saint of Hollywood and all the ghosts haunting its weathered white sign, is cheerleading the very concept of movies, reminding the audience in flashy, abrasive fashion, how far the industry and its technology have come. It feels as wacky as it sounds, especially after spending the last three hours in celluloid la la land. It’s the kind of montage you might see at an awards season, a rush of clips from movies that span the entirety of film history, among them Un Chien Andalou, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Jurassic Park, and Avatar. The movie flies into a montage, set to Justin Hurwitz’s thumping score. She’s like the Victorian child meme, except a single frame from Babylon would be her poison.Īnd then. “Wild parties! Swimming pools!” she shouts. In Singin’ in the Rain, Don (Gene Kelly) has a similar argument with Kathy (Debbie Reynolds), who sneers that screen actors are “nothing but a shadow on film!” She also decries the diminishing morality of Hollywood. There are also other, more subtle references to the 1952 classic, including a scene where Jack Conrad argues with his wife Estelle ( Katherine Waterston), a stage actor, because she looks down on movie acting. (Chazelle, an Old Hollywood musical obsessive, is an avowed fan of the film, using it as inspiration for his 2016 musical La La Land and getting advice from Gene Kelly’s widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, who let the writer-director look at Kelly’s archived props from the film, as well as read his Singin’ script with handwritten notes.) At that point, if it isn’t already obvious, Babylon is a kind of brutal reimagining of Singin’ in the Rain, this time training the camera on the silent film stars whose careers were tragically cut short. In spite of her Jersey squawk, he casts in her posh roles, including one that’s a near-replica of Lamont’s, coaching her on how to say her lines and soften her vowels. The homage gets even more explicit later on after Manny climbs the ladder to become a studio exec and turns La Roy into his own personal Eliza Doolittle. What was that ending all about? And what was Chazelle ultimately trying to say? Well, aside from the obvious ( Movies, now more than ever!), let’s tuck into the layers of Babylon’s frenetic, maximalist ending of total excess and pluck out the plot points that got us here. By the end of the three-hour odyssey, the film feels like a dark prequel to Singin’ In the Rain, culminating in a montage that shows the weird and wild history and future of movies, ranging from the practical horror of the 1929 short Un Chien Andalou, all the way up to the tech spectacle of Avatar.īut let’s back up for a moment. But…what if it wasn’t? What if it was an epic tragedy about the silent film stars who were brutally sacrificed for Hollywood to become what it is today? That’s the twist of Babylon, Damien Chazelle’s coked-up ode to cinema. ![]() ![]() Singin’ in the Rain, the classic 1952 musical about Hollywood’s transition from silent films to talkies, is, by all accounts, a joyful romantic comedy. This article contains spoilers for Babylon. ![]()
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