Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Though most films made today are shot in such varied locations as Atlanta, New York, London, Dubai, Mumbai, and Lagos, there was a time when Hollywood was the epicenter of movie creation. The first film completed in Tinseltown was The Count of Monte Cristo in 1908 and since then, the area around Los Angeles has been forever linked to the birth of not only some of cinema’s greatest achievements but the advent of some of the industry’s transformative technologies.
The biggest was the introduction of sound to the once silent medium and Golden Globe and Oscar winning director Damien Chazelle has taken that pivotal moment of transition as the starting point to his satire Babylon.
The film takes us back to the late 1920s when the nascent film business was bustling and operating without a rule book – often emboldened in decadence, depravity and personal outrageousness. We are introduced to numerous players; from the well-established film star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) to the aspiring Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) to the immigrant dreamer Manny (Diego Calva). Each is doing all they can to adapt to this environment and make their names by any means necessary.
Much of the film feeds off the significance of sound, specifically, how Chazelle balances between the human voice, and how it became a monumental renovation in films, to the frenetic beats of jazz (underscored by Justin Hurwitz) that immerses the audience in a non-stop state of exaltation. 
“The dictum for the movie’s music was similar to that for the costumes, hair and makeup and sets. It was to be rooted in the time, to not be anachronistic, but to really push the edges of what we normally would expect from that period,” Chazelle revealed in the press notes. “Our guiding principle for music was: Have we already seen it? Has it been done well before? If so, we’ve got to do something different.”
In a strange way, the music is comparable to many of the players we witness. There is disruption. There is vibrancy. It is relentless.
“Hollywood underwent a series of rapid and at times seemingly cataclysmic changes in the 20s, and some people survived, but many didn’t,” he adds. “You look at what these people went through, and it gives you a sense of the human cost that accompanied the kind of ambition that attracted so many people to Los Angeles at that time.”
Babylon received Golden Globe nominations for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Score.