Babylon (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

Babylon is a wild ride. Damien Chazelle's latest is also his largest, a massive and immersive cinematic experience of excess. In every way that La La Land was a sentimental look at making it big in Hollywood, this is the dark, wicked underbelly of that dream. It all looks glamorous and fun, especially from the outside, but this film delves deep into how much work and sacrifice "the biz" can be, especially for those whose broken dreams and desperation lead them to increasingly dangerous new paths.

The film immediately introduces us to Manny Torres (Diego Calva in a star-making performance), a Mexican immigrant in Los Angeles trying to deliver an elephant to a party. It shits all over one of the delivery drivers, and we see everything. It's this unabashed "fuck you" Chazelle gives us right away to set the tone of Babylon, a movie that pulls no punches with its nasty, icky, and bizarre depictions of all things taboo. By the time he gets to the party -- at a Kinescope Studios executive's mansion -- he sees it in all its Gatsby-like flair, in which an elephant is hardly the most gobsmacking element. It's a full-on bacchanal, dripping with drugs and booze, blasted with loud jazz, with the main ball room serving as a an orgy. Again, we see pretty much everything, as Chazelle pulls us though the middle of the party in long takes with a swiveling camera (thanks to cinematographer Linus Sandgren for some truly unforgettable visuals). It's Chazelle's Caligula, and time will only tell if this will be remembered as infamously. I suspect it will.

I could spend paragraphs talking about various aspects of this film. Its stellar cast -- including Jovan Adepo as a jazz trumpeter, Li Jun Li as a queer cabaret singer, and especially Jean Smart as a gossip journalist -- with no few notable cameos are a lot of fun. Apart from Calva, Margot Robbie leads with her usual panache as an aspiring actress and Brad Pitt shines with an almost too-personal level of gravitas as an actor on the way out. I would have liked to see more of his story, as it was just about the only thing that grounds this movie emotionally. What plot exists in this three-hour escapade hinges on the end of the silent film era, as "talkies" began making big waves; but this is hardly The Artist or Singin' in the Rain. And so, even though Tobey Maguire's shocking and uncomfortable extended cameo near film's end is well worth the wait, there is just too much muchness to discuss in this film. So that's really what I want to talk about.

(Vis-à-vis the cast, I do want to praise composer Justin Hurwitz's score for isolating recurring themes for each character that really help connect things thematically and emotionally through this odyssey of chaos.)

Babylon, if it weren't orchestrated on such an immense budget and with such big names attached, should be considered something like an experimental film. Chazelle, who also wrote it, has crafted a series of vignettes with few through-lines to connect them other than a general aesthetic of chaos and excess. Each is almost standalone in its incisive assault on our senses and on various specific aspects of the industry. Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than a magnificent sequence probably an hour or so into the film in which Robbie, Pitt, and everyone else amasses in a desert field owned by Kinescope to shoot several movies at once. The insane reality of a live shoot on location is hammered home by the frenetic editing, bombastic score, lurid colorscape, and fevered performances; by the end, we feel as exhausted as everyone on set must feel. Its effect? To show us a Hollywood film -- with all its glamor -- that ultimately makes us feel sick; this is not the usual inspirational "dream it, be it" a-star-is-born movie.

In fact, I'd argue it often deliberately tries to ruin our opinion of itself by drawing special attention to bodily functions and fluids. Much like the elephant shit that opens the film, the film treats us to plentiful vomit, urine, blood, venom, etc., to the point that by its end -- paired as these elements are with grotesque imagery, vicious language, and bonkers new ideas -- I felt thoroughly drained and crushed by the sheer weight of manipulations thrown at me. And that's surely by design, as it is no doubt similar to how many of the characters (and real-life Hollywood workers of the time) felt about major studio climates, working conditions, and the impending threat of new media to displace their craft. Even on a purely verbal level, the film all but drowns us with actual historical detail and wacky urban legends to the point that the whole thing just zings with ambivalent energy. Not unlike Tarantino's Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, you're never exactly sure if things should be funny or cringey, and who exactly the butt of each joke is meant to be.

And that's why the film, ambitious and huge and memorable as it is, doesn't really work for me. I'm all for a story about collapsed dreams and personal compromises against the glitz of pre-Golden-Age Hollywood, but we've had these before. One with so many tendencies toward a real narrative that doesn't actually follow through on that narrative can't maintain my attentions for such a long runtime, not even with spectacle coming out the wazoo. It doesn't help that the final act of this film desperately injects the experience with contrived urgency and moralistic lessons; it's all about the dangers of doing drugs in the industry and how deeply in trouble you can get if you're not careful. Really? One wonders if some producers needed Chazelle to end on a less hedonistic or debauched note, and it rings false not only for his project as a whole but for him as an artist. Otherwise, the idealistic mantra at film's end -- "wasn't it all worth it?" they ask -- lands flat. Which it kind of does anyway. Out the wazoo, indeed.