Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (March 15, 2023)
When we last saw filmmaker Damien Chazelle via 2018’s First Man, he directed a tale about the history of the Apollo missions. He returns with 2022’s Babylon, a story that examines the Hollywood of the 1920s.
Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) offers a brash presence. She comes to Hollywood and seems willing to do whatever it takes to become a star.
Mexican Manny Torres (Diego Calva) also dreams of success in movies behind the camera. He gets a boost when he meets aging matinee idol Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt).
This relationship allows Manny to work on various sets and move up the ladder of opportunity. All these characters and more cross paths through this decadent era of early Hollywood, one soon roiled by the introduction of talking pictures.
If you think that synopsis feels vague, then I agree. Babylon doesn’t offer an especially plot-heavy affair, so I opted for “short ‘n’ loose” rather than “long ‘n’ tedious”.
In addition to Manny, Nell and Jack, we get a slew of other characters in this ensemble piece. Some feature more heavily than others but the film spreads around different roles in a broad manner.
None of this lends itself toward a concise, taut tale. Instead, Babylon presents a sprawling tale that Chazelle clearly hopes will become an epic classic.
Unfortunately, Chazelle falls short of these goals, mainly because he can’t find a particularly coherent narrative. As noted, Babylon spreads itself thin across its many characters, and Chazelle fails to balance them in an especially smooth manner.
Babylon also suffers because Chazelle makes so many obvious nods toward so many earlier movies. Of course, the influence of 1952’s classic Singin’ in the Rain becomes most apparent.
Chazelle barely attempts to hide his nods toward that film. Babylon includes scenes that nearly come lifted straight from Rain, and the inclusion of a production number that uses the 1952 movie’s title track makes these lifts even more obvious – as does a scene at Babylon’s end that makes these subtextual allusions literal.
I won’t spell out that last element in the interest of spoiler avoidance, but it seems like an awfully on the nose choice. On one hand, it feels bold of Chazelle to so openly acknowledge his debt to Rain, but on the other hand, it seems bizarre to make this so obvious.
Beyond Rain, Chazelle demonstrates a slew of other influences. The opening party – which fills nearly half an hour of running time – comes across like an “X”-rated nod toward the wedding in 1972’s Godfather, and Chazelle’s fascination with movie shoots echoes Hail, Caesar!, 2016’s Coen brothers love letter to Hollywood of the 1950s.
The farther into Babylon we go, though, another initially less obvious inspiration materializes: 1997’s Boogie Nights. As we follow the highs and eventual lows of the main characters, Babylon becomes exceedingly evocative of Nights, with a late scene that highly reminds us of the latter’s Alfred Molina segment.
Somewhere buried beneath all these influences, Chazelle wants to make a point about society and Hollywood and movies. However, he finds himself unable to bring things together in a coherent manner.
Which leads us back to the basic self-indulgence at the core of Babylon. This element that becomes clear literally from the movie’s start.
Babylon, we get a close-up of an elephant’s anus and then see said butthole expel massive quantities of feces over a man.
Less than five minutes into Babylon, we see a woman urinate over the enormous belly of a naked obese man.
I guess Chazelle intends these scenes to send us to “not in Kansas” mode. He wants to paint the era’s decadence and depravity and tells us right out of the gate to expect a graphic, unfiltered view.
Which seems fine, but it also ultimately feels superfluous to the movie's purpose and message. The perversion on display does little to serve the overall narrative and comes across more as Chazelle’s attempt to shock the audience right out of the gate than anything valuable.
Chazelle settles down after that opening half-hour and other than a few exceptions, he avoids this unnecessarily tawdry material. However, he never settles into a real groove, as he fails to present a story with an especially coherent plot.
Oh, Chazelle throws themes at us, but they seem haphazard and without real clarity. At times he toys with issues of equality, especially in the poor way Hollywood treated women and minorities – with an obvious reminder that those groups don’t fare that much better almost a century later.
Unfortunately, Chazelle merely dabbles in these tones. He never develops them in a compelling manner.
Again, Chazelle never brings together Babylon as a full package period. He simply throws a lot at the wall and hopes it’ll stick.
Which a fair amount of it does. Despite all the flaws I note, Babylon remains pretty darned watchable most of the time.
Granted, the extreme running time hurts it. Whereas Chazelle seems to believe the “epic treatment” adds depth, instead it simply threatens to exhaust the viewer, and we find plenty of scenes that seem superfluous.
Nonetheless, Chazelle does get credit for the fact that Babylon remains largely involving despite its sprawling mess of a story and its extended length. It does lose steam as it goes, partly because it gets more serious and loses the wild ramshackle nature of the first two hours.
Still, much of Babylon seems entertaining. That becomes an obvious positive.
Chazelle also amasses a stunning cast here. In addition to those already mentioned, we find folks like Jean Smart, Olivia Wilde, Eric Roberts, Tobey Maguire, PJ Byrne, Max Minghella, Jeff Garlin, Katharine Waterston, and many more.
Indeed, in arguably the movie’s most clever moment, we find Samara Weaving as an actor whom Nellie doubles. Given that so many believe Robbie and Weaving look identical, this inside joke delights.
Ultimately, Babylon delivers a reasonably entertaining movie but not one that flirts with greatness. It simply seems too self-indulgent and messy to hit the highs it hopes to achieve.
