Arun Arun
How Brad Pitt And Margot Robbie Feel About The Tragic Life Of Actors On Display In Babylon
Chazelle’s Babylon is a celebration of filmmaking and cinema history, but it is also a real-to-life portrayal, not just a love letter.
There is a tonne of excess and fun, but there is also a tonne of sadness and mortality.
The film sheds a lot of light on the struggles that actors face in the business, and I was curious how the actors themselves saw the portrayal in light of their own careers in contemporary Hollywood.
Earlier this month, during the Los Angeles press day for Babylon, I conducted interviews with Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo, and Li Jun Li. One of the questions I asked each actor was regarding how they handled the tragic lives of the on-screen characters dealing with the challenges of the business.
Pitt, who plays Jack Conrad, an A-lister whose fame starts to wane as talkies replace silent movies, mused that the protagonists’ “messy” lives are more a reflection of the human experience in general than just performers, though he acknowledged that the stars of the 1920s and 1930s led slightly less responsible lives.
At a glance, Babylon invites itself to be viewed as the anti-Singin’ in the Rain.
How Brad Pitt And Margot Robbie Feel About The Tragic Life Of Actors On Display In Babylon
Both films examined the turbulent years of the late 1920s and the change from silent to talkies, but Babylon is a warts-and-all embracing of the Hollywood wasteland that Gene Kelly tap danced over, in contrast to the 1952 musical classic, which was a charming and polished scrapbook.
The director now shifts away from Turner Classic Movie daydreams to go into the material that isn’t covered in the official bios after creating a love letter to the iconography of golden age Hollywood in La La Land, the film that Chazelle’s early career had previously been building toward. It’s exhilarating. at least for the first few hours.
Who Was Margot Robbie’s Character, Nellie LaRoy, Based On?
Clara Bow is the inspiration for Margot Robbie’s character. It was shrewd of director Chazelle to change the characters’ names to something else (except for producer Irving Thalberg). This prevented nitpicking from critics like myself and also illustrates how frequently the best historical fiction draws from a variety of sources.
Robbie has discussed how her investigation into Bow’s life influenced her depiction of Nellie LaRoy while promoting Babylon. Robbie claims to have learned that “she had perhaps the most horrible childhood I can imagine.” All true.
The actress was reared in an underprivileged Brooklyn tenement (moved to New Jersey in the film because of the borough’s now worldwide cool image). Bow’s mother was a delusional schizophrenic who allegedly tried to murder her; her alcoholic father may have been sexually abusive.
Bow’s reputation as a “emotion machine” is seen in one of Robbie’s best sequences, in which she cries repeatedly and in various ways on set. As in the film, Bow famously said that all he needed to do to use this skill was to “think of home.”
In a small but important role, Jean Smart plays Elinor St. John, a cross between “Hollywood’s Mother Confessor,” journalist Adela Rogers St.
Johns, and the British romance novelist who invented the idea of the “It Girl,” Elinor Glyn. These were the only two people in Hollywood who tried, unsuccessfully, to mentor and protect Clara Bow.
The film rips much of Nellie LaRoy’s characterization almost straight from the history books about Bow’s life. Robbie plays her with the ferocious edge associated with one of the silent era’s most popular stars.
The first It Girl and the Jazz Age’s definitive sex symbol, Bow was a symbol of hope for her millions of hardscrabble fans—a message underscored throughout Babylon.
Similar to Bow, LaRoy dresses scandalously and doesn’t try to hide her recent “rising from the gutter,” as Bow’s real-life mentor Glyn put it, unlike so many other movie characters, including Pitt’s role. LaRoy is bisexual, but the only thing we can be certain of is that Bow was an open-minded omnivore. Who knows, then?
Why is the movie Babylon called Babylon?
Damien Chazelle’s film Babylon takes its name from the actual Babylon, which served as the centre of a once-powerful empire.
Is Babylon Based on a true story?
Instead of telling a genuine event, Babylon focuses heavily on showing the exploitative history of film and how that affected the society that developed around it. But some of the feedback on the movie has focused on how Chazelle handled this excessive excess.
What is the symbolic meaning of Babylon?
Despite the fact that the word “Babylon” is derived from the Akkadian word “babilu,” which means “gate of god,” it is clear that this place is a copy of God’s eternal metropolis. The metaphor of Babylon effectively conveys the opposition to God’s authority by superpowers or the exile of God’s people from the country of blessing.
Who destroyed Babylon?
Less than a century after its creation, in 539 B.C., Cyrus the Great, a mythical Persian king, overthrew Babylon. When the empire was ruled by the Persians, Babylon had fully fallen.
Who wiped out Babylon?
Two centuries later, Alexander the Great intended for Babylon to be the crowning achievement of his Asian empire, but he died there in 323 BCE. Babylon never recovered from the Parthians’ thorough sacking of it in the second century C.E.
What does the Lion symbolize in Babylon?
The lion has been a recurring subject in the history of the area as a representation of strength and triumph over foes and misfortune. The lion was connected with the goddess Ishtar in ancient Babylon, and the back of the statue bears signs that suggest it was probably intended to hold the goddess Ishtar while she was seated.
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