I'm an avid fan of Damien Chazelle's Whiplash for how real it feels, so I was shocked by Babylon's "in your face" embellishment. How could the same writer-director create something with so much meaning, then go onto make a box office failure?
In this essay, I looked to resolve my confusion by diving into Babylon and Whiplash's historical grounding and their story structure to discover just how they impart their very different feelings of "realness."
If you stay until the end, I promise you'll be surprised by the results (just like I was).
Thanks for watching :)
Adam Neely's video on Whiplash's realism - https://youtu.be/SFYBVGdB7MU?si=q3-XWhqqO1B_QayH
0:00 - Introduction
00:41 - Babylon's Historical Accuracy
05:25 - Whiplash's Real-World Accuracy
7:24 - Whiplash's Exemplar Writing
10:16 - Each Story's Take on Ambition
34:04 - But the Overall Structure Has to Make It Worse, Right?
42:11 - The Conclusion...?
45:31 - My Own Video's Actual Truth