‘It’s written in the stars. I am a star...’
Damien Chazelle has had a curious career thus far. He burst onto the scene with Whiplash, one of the best films of the 21st century, before earning further acclaim with La La Land. That film was a big swing for the rafters which inevitably made it divisive (I loved it) but Chazelle followed that up with the more conventional (and dull) First Man. After that movie flopped, Chazelle spent four years away before returning with Babylon, his ode to the golden era of Hollywood, and honestly, it is unlike any film I have seen before…
Babylon is a decadent and hysterical retelling of early Hollywood. through the eyes of fictional silent movie stars Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) and Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie). The former is the biggest star in the game, an old hand who turns up to the set drunk and still gets a standing O when the director yells cut. The latter is at the start of her career but her star power turns heads across Hollywood. Both of their careers are put in jeopardy by the start of the sound era (beginning with The Jazz Singer in 1927).
Chazelle’s magnum opus begins with an actual elephant shitting on someone’s head and the picture just becomes more outlandish and bizarre from there. The first hour is a breathless assault on the senses – a whirlwind of sex, drugs and jazz. It’s brilliant. Robbie throws herself into the role in a performance that only a handful of actors on the planet could pull off, Pitt is reliable as ever and Manny Torres is also great as the audience surrogate holding our hand and guiding us through an ever-escalating torrent of preposterous events and scenes. The issue is that Babylon peaks around the hour mark and what follows is nearly two more hours of messy near nonsense. The performances become ever more ostentatious and relentless, the pace never lets up and only the soundtrack maintains its quality until the end.
There are parts of Babylon that are truly terrible. To the point where it is surprising nobody on the production took Chazelle aside to beg him to tone it down. Other parts are magnificent. As a whole, this is a film that veers wildly between genius and dross, often within the same scene. I will say one thing for it. I won’t forget it in a hurry.