(Los Angeles) Hollywood has largely turned the page on its drug excesses, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, stars of the film, explained on Monday babylon devoted to the hedonistic Hollywood of the roaring 1920s and entered the race for the Oscars.
The highly anticipated Paramount film, directed by Damien Chazelle (La La Land, whiplash), screened to critics for the first time on Monday night at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, which presents these prestigious awards each year.
Tobey Maguire and Jean Smart also star in the film, which chronicles the destinies of mostly fictional Hollywood actors and directors trying to make the transition from silent to talkies, but also a lifestyle of disheveled cocaine-dusted parties and chaotic shoots. , explicit images in support.
“There are a lot less drugs in Hollywood these days,” said Margot Robbie, when asked in a post-screening debate whether the film made her nostalgic for a so-called “golden age.” of the film industry.
” Unfortunately it’s true ! “joked Brad Pitt.
babylon is one of the latest Oscar nominees to be introduced to the Academy. The film will be released on December 23 in North America – just in time to be eligible for the Oscars in March – before a wider release in January. Reviews remain under embargo.
Elephants and dancers
Franco-American Damien Chazelle made cinematic history in 2017 when he became the youngest winner of the Best Director Oscar at the age of 32. La La Land, an ode to Hollywood musicals. Previously, whiplash (2014) was nominated for the Best Screenplay Oscar.
For three hours, babylon recounts the Los Angeles of the 1920s and 1930s, its lavish parties with elephants and bare-breasted dancers as well as its expensive filming in the Californian desert.
The film also addresses racism or the devastating effect on silent stars of rapid technological change. Some have been expelled almost overnight.
Damien Chazelle explained that he was inspired by readings about a “strange phenomenon in the late 1920s, with this epidemic of suicides, deaths that seem to have been overdoses of a suicidal drug”.
This phenomenon coincided with the transition to talkies in Hollywood and it is what “gave him this brutal face”, according to the director, who created his characters based on several stars and real moguls of the time.
Brad Pitt explained that he discussed with Chazelle this period during which Hollywood was “the Wild West”.
“I had kind of brushed off that era, didn’t really pay attention to it – because it’s not a genre of game that I refer to,” he continued. “That’s not where we gravitate today.”