Film review: ‘BABYLON’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
Exactly what writer/ director Damien Chazelle was trying to say with his latest film, Babylon, a wild sprawling, occasionally funny, often ridiculous, exhaustingly manic, yet emotionally hollow homage/satire/savaging of early Hollywood is not entirely clear. It’s as if he’s poured all his memories of film making and watching into a blender, mixed them with lurid fantasies of Hollywood’s debauched underbelly and splattered out this crazy film.
Filled with huge elaborate set pieces including manic, coke-fueled, orgiastic parties that look like Russ Meyer meets Caligula, all driven by a terrific hyper-energised jazz score, the film is certainly a potent sensory assault. It often feels like it’s careening out of control leaving it somewhere between riotous fun and a headache inducing mess.
In the first half hour, which mostly features a crazily over-the-top party filled with naked bodies and giant phalluses, some (like myself) might be thinking ‘what the hell is Damien Chazelle doing? Is this his Heaven’s Gate?’ The scenes are perversely entertaining but at that point we have no idea where this film is going. Thankfully, some semblance of order asserts itself as the film starts to focus on the plight of four characters who attempt to navigate the strange, predatory yet intoxicating world of Hollywood at the end of the silent era.
Margot Robbie stars as New Jersey native Nellie Laroy, a self-described wild child whose looks and willingness to do just about anything a director asks see her rapidly become a box office sensation. Brad Pitt plays pencil-moustached matinee idol Jack Conrad whose star has begun to fade as the talkies displace the silent films that have made him an icon. Diego Calva appears as Mannie Torres a Mexican-American film assistant whose smarts and work ethic see him ascend the studio power structure. Jovan Adepo plays virtuoso jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer who seems to have gained success and acceptance from white bread Hollywood only to endure its humiliating reality. There’s a huge cast of supporting players, most notably Jean Smart as an acerbic gossip columnist and Tobey Maguire as a creepy gangster who looks like he’s just stepped out of David Lynch’s Lost Highway. While the cast give their all and their characters are vividly rendered, the frenzied script fails to take us on a journey with them, they don’t connect with us emotionally and just seem like apparitions in Chazelle’s Hollywood fever dream.
As a human drama the film is a misfire but if audiences are after a visual and aural assault, Chazelle delivers big time. Not only are the party scenes weirdly mesmerising but he also conjures remarkable images of vast film sets in the California orange groves which, at one time, include a gigantic medieval battle sequence in which OH and S is nowhere to be found.
As well as pummeling us visually and aurally, Chazelle seems most interested in celebrating his favourite filmmakers. This movie is swarming with the DNA of iconic Hollywood and European directors from Busby Berkeley to Vincent Minnelli, David lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino and Gaspar Noe among many others. In a psychedelic freak-out montage toward the end of the film (that features numerous snippets from other movies) this homage is absolutely gratuitous but weirdly exhilarating.
For a film about the magical and destructive early days of Hollywood, Babylon isn’t revelatory but the skill and fervour with which Chazelle presents this world is often impressive. Babylon doesn’t completely work and a little too often lands with a resounding thud but I’m glad someone in Hollywood had the balls to make something this loopy.
Nick’s rating: ***
Genre: Drama/ Action/ Historical/ Comedy.
Classification: MA15+.
Director(s): Damien Chazelle.
Release date: 19th Jan 2023..
Running time: 189 mins.
Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.