Babylon
Starring Diego Calva, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie
Rated MA15+
3.5/5
A brash, gaudy but reverent tribute to early Hollywood, Babylon is somewhat less than the sum of its scintillating parts.
Directed by Damien Chazelle, Babylon excels in its visual language and more restrained dramatic moments.
Diego Calva anchors the film as Manny, an ambitious Mexican-American film assistant, delivering Golden Age good looks and charisma. Brad Pitt has a touching, tragic arc as Jack Conroy, a fading movie star who comes to accept that he has attained immortality through his work. A major theme in Babylon is the film industry’s struggle to adapt to sound in the late twenties, and the film’s stand-out sequence is a nerve-wracking yet funny ordeal of a crew driven to sweaty, screaming rage as they keep messing up a scene.
Babylon has sumptuous cinematography, and certain scenes invoke The Seventh Seal, The Exorcist, Lost Highway and Carrie. Only film nerds like me will get this, but a subplot involving an outrageously angry German director (Spike Jonze) is almost certainly a riff on Fritz Lang. Babylon has several impressive long takes, but the close-up dialogue scenes have distracting handheld camerawork.
Even for the heightened reality of Hollywood, some scenes go too far with bodily fluids and bizarre, debauched atmosphere. Babylon’s opening party, an overstimulating literal orgy, will be an instant turn-off for some viewers. The tone comes full circle with a macabre mob party, but it’s too outlandishly disturbing – think David Lynch on bath salts – to be taken seriously.
Margot Robbie is Babylon’s weakest link: Robbie plays budding actress Nellie LaRoy with great range and gusto, but Nellie’s story of a rising star succumbing to drug abuse just isn’t very interesting.
Babylon is engaging and passionate but messy in more ways than one, and is playing in most Victorian cinemas.
– Seth Lukas Hynes
