Now playing at nearly every multiplex near me:

BABYLON (Dir. Damien Chazzelle, 2022)

Back in the innocent Before Times of 2016, Damien Chazzelle’s LA LA LAND became an international sensation that almost won Best Picture at the Oscars (actually for a minute it looked like it did win the big one, but it still swept with six other wins). The Harvard-educated wunderkind’s 2018 follow-up, the Neil Armstrong biopic, FIRST MAN, while not making as big as a splash, also garnered great reviews, and a bunch of nominations (it won one Oscar), but I doubt his latest exuberant epic depicting Hollywood’s decadent early days will get anywhere near comparable award season action.

But BABYLON sure does its damnedest to get attention from its stunning opening, circa 1926, in which we meet over-eager immigrant Manuel “Manny” Torres, played by Diego Calva in his first English-language speaking role, as he wrangles an elephant to a hilltop mansion in the desert of Bel Air for one of the most intense, wildest parties seen on the silver screen in recent memory.

The sordid soiree that every corner of the debauchery the camera mesmerizingly swoops to capture is held by the head of the fictional Kinoscope Studios, producer Don Wallach (Jeff Garlin), and in attendance is silent movie A-lister, Jack Conrad, played by current day A-lister, Brad Pitt, looking and seeming even more jaded, grizzled, and world weary than in his last couple of pictures, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, and BULLET TRAIN, respectively.

To the flamboyant accompaniment of a group of musicians headed by Chinese-American caberet singer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), and Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo, serving the same sort of side-line role that John Legend did in LA LA LAND) ’s whose blaring trumpet the camera keeps closing in on as if to get inside, Manny meets the movie’s real star, Margot Robbie as Nellie LeRoy, the definition of a fresh-off-the-bus, aspiring actress, and they maneuver around the cocaine-alcohol-fueled orgy for the rest of the night until Nellie gets her big break because another starlet doesn’t make it out of the beyond-bacchanalian bash alive.

This extended opening sequence goes on and on, but that’s unsurprising as the film has the intimidating run-time of three hours and 15 minutes, so strap yourself in. After the party fades into the harsh sharp light of day, we get into the heart of the film’s premise, the dawn of talking pictures, via a series of scenes taking us through how Manny, Jack, and Nellie deal with their fates in the changing industry.

There’s a lot of lush, engaging activity alive in the narrative, but there’s also a lot of disgusting, unpleasant imagery, including a fair amount of vomit too, culminating in a sex dungeon set-piece (you read that right) with a pretty pleased with himself Tobey Maguire as creepy mob boss James McKay that really tasted the limits of my patience, and tolerance for whatever point Chazelle is making with this sleazy spectacle that appears to glamorize rather than condemn such ugliness. 

The story of how sound came in and destroyed the careers of key silent film players is, well, as old as it is at over a hundred years ago, and it’s not given a fresh spin here, just a more in-your-face, look how f-ed up it was, tawdry take by writer/director Chazelle, who went big on bawdy, but short-changed us on insightful substance. At times it feels like the film’s entire reason for being is to be the dark flip side to the sunniness of the Los Angeles of LA LA LAND. 

I will give a shout out to a juicy Jean Smart (Charlene from Designing Women for you old-timers) as Elinor St. John – it’s a very familiar showbiz gossip columnist character, but Smart does a lot with very little and somehow stands out in all the colorful crumminess.

Pitt, Robbie, and Calva do good invested work, especially Robbie who steals the show dancing on the bar in sloshy take after take of a wonderfully clichéd saloon scene, and, despite the abundant puke, cinematographer Linus Sandgren (LA LA LAND, FIRST MAN, NO TIME TO DIE) provides captivating shot after shot (he’s the only one that really deserves an Oscar nod here IMHO) so there’s enough going on for me to recommend this not-so tall Tinseltown tale, but with strong reservations.