Babylon Editor Reveals How He Helped Shape The Film's 'Controlled Chaos' [Exclusive]

Every film is made by a team of individuals with mighty aspirations who push themselves to unfathomable heights to do what they do best and make it look easy for the viewing audience. But as anyone behind the scenes of any production will tell you, it's never quite that simple. Damien Chazelle's selective body of work shows a filmmaker obsessed with that process, whether it be making it in the world of jazz ("Whiplash") or stepping foot on the moon ("First Man").

"Babylon," which /Film's Jeff Ewing calls "a raucous ride" in his review, is just as much about the tumultuous path to stardom as much as it is about the destructive nature of cinema. The magic of movies is no doubt presented as exhilarating, albeit through a lens that wants to capture the uglier side of the pastime. The lawlessness of '20s Hollywood suddenly had to adjust to a new way of doing things. In doing so, it turned itself inside out to keep up with the birth of new trends, and the death of others.

What appealed to me about "Babylon" tackling this period of history was how Chazelle and his team would capture the anarchy of an era described as roaring, and boy is it a party. The epic-length runtime sustains itself because it separates these developments across a string of anxiety-inducing vignettes. It is absolute chaos, but with this team behind the wheel, it feels masterfully staged. Even though he's worked on Chazelle's previous films, editor Tom Cross considers "Babylon" one of the greatest challenges of his career.

While speaking with /Film's Jenna Busch, Cross talked about how creating the disorder of "Babylon" was a massive task that he took to heart. "This was the hardest movie I've ever worked on," says Cross. The composer has been an integral part of Chazelle's work, going so far as to win an Academy Award for Best Film Editing with "Whiplash." In both cases, you have stories of folks wanting to break into the industry, only to discover how much the imbalance of such a journey is going to cost their sanity.

When you take into account the Dante's Inferno that is the opening party, you're presented with a snapshot of brazen debauchery that goes off the rails, but you get swept up in the madness anyways. Cross talks about how Chazalle wanted a sequence like such this to feel as if we were in the middle of the hottest party of the year:

"He wanted to put it all up on the screen — everything and the kitchen sink — and he wanted it to feel rough and loud and feral and reckless. He wanted it to feel chaotic. But we knew that if we wanted to tell a story, it had to be controlled chaos."

There's always something going on in the frame, but with a cast like Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Brad Pitt, Jovan Adepo, and Li Jun Li, among countless others, you still need to be able to find a way to their performance amid the party streamers, disorderly sets, and rapturous dancing. Cross' trick for capturing this energy in the edit bay lay in the presence of another Chazelle alum.

With the demonstration of disciplined excess that Chazelle was hoping to nail down, Cross talks about how it was Justin Hurwitz's score that formed the basis for how he wanted to put this film together. "I used Justin Hurwitz's high-energy, adrenaline-filled score as a guiding light for the rhythm of the picture," says Cross.

Given how much Chazelle loves his music, especially jazz, it comes as no surprise that the soundtracks to his films are just as memorable. Hurwitz has been with the filmmaker since his "Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench" days. He even won an Academy Award for his work on "La La Land." But where that score was dreamlike and uplifting, the sound of "Babylon" makes you feel as if you're constantly on edge as the industry swallows these characters whole.

There are many sequences in here that brought me back to the heart-racing finale of "Whiplash," where Cross' cuts are in perfect synchronicity with Hurwitz's beats. The frenetic actions of the characters are always bustling, but never at the expense of clarity. It's one thing to keep up this kind of rhythm throughout a party sequence, but this three-hour odyssey gives Cross plenty of opportunities to cement the feeling of imbalance in your mind.

"Babylon" is set to hit theaters on December 23, 2022.