Babylon Review: Damien Chazelle's film oscillates between madness and magic

In a scene from Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, the shoot of a battle scene goes awry, descending into a fracas of comic proportions, culminating in a man being accidentally stabbed by the very spear he was supposed to carry. It’s a scene that perfectly illustrates the puzzlingly voracious nature of this beast that is stunning, scandalous and senseless at the same time. So much is happening in Babylon at any given moment, it can feel like a whiplash of emotion and commotion, noise and nuance, often cutting across the teeth of the other, trying to fashion a bite. To which effect, Babylon feels like a Paul Thomas Anderson film trying to do its best impression of The Wolf of Wall Street.

Leading a huge star-studded cast here is the terrific Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy, a silver screen dreamer who isn’t afraid to get her hands, quite literally, dirty. Cinema is like pulling a tulip out of the gutter, which explains why everything in Babylon, feels chaotically biblical. Nellie is joined by fellow dreamer Manuel Torres (Diego Calva) who, must train himself on the more municipal tasks of filmmaking to get his foot inside the industry door. As the two climb the proverbial ladder, Babylon evokes an unflattering image of American filmmaking, especially the chaos of creating its bespoke canvasses. People die, actors scream their vocal chords out as sets routinely devolve into riots, in this excitable, jumpy and at times exaggerated mishmash of confused abandonment and copious exhilaration.

Though the acting performances stick, propelled by a scene-stealing turn by Brad Pitt, as a drunken slob of a movie star, there is far too much happening here to actually care about the journey of each. There is so much sex, sleaze and casual salaciousness on display, it becomes impossible to not consider this a comic book version of what the hysterical beginnings of American tinsel town must have been. Everything feels like a drunken haze, perpetually bombarded with the sight of naked bodies and booties. At its infancy, the film suggests, Hollywood functioned like an overenthusiastic adolescent. Enthralled by the potential of a staggering medium in the making, and bewitched by just how easily it helped erase morality as a sort of social boundary. In one scene, where Robbie dances uninhibitedly for a dance sequence, the director of the film has to explicitly call out a man for getting too excited. It’s indubitably funny, but also evocative of the many lessons and learnings it has taken to mould a heady, unorganised civilisation of thinkers and doers to build something akin to an industry.

Babylon obviously references films and artists from the nascent era of Hollywood, and infuses its frames with the tint of nostalgia, but the symbolism doesn’t always translate. At times, the film can resemble the spoof of the making of a traditional western, and while that might be accurate to an extent, this portrayal feels more hysterical than historical. Some of the disorder, feels far too reminiscent of Scorsese’s work, lifting from the gut of his films, their most iconic qualities. People here make love on sets, inside opera houses and arrive to work drunk. In a terrific scene, Bitt barely manages to climb a hill to shoot a scene before the sun goes down. The chaotic nervousness of everyone in the crew, coupled with the relief of getting that one, clichéd scene, is a beautiful little sequence.

There are things to like about Babylon. The performances rarely disappoint, even though the cues for them do. There is, at least, an inclination to capture the evolution of cinema, its hair-raising challenges and the kind of social overhaul that makes it impossible to not admire early storytellers as possibly the greatest innovators of this medium. What is painfully clear about this film, however, that it never quite feels like an original work, but an ungainly, at times overcooked mesh of many inspirations and questionable choices. At three hours long the film frankly takes forever to say far too little, espousing the kind of maniacal energy, that feels like a cheap ruse as opposed to something incisive.

Trim Babylon’s many eye-popping set pieces, dial down its tendency to dissolve into jock-boy fantasies and allows its characters to feel more than just the high of ‘making it’, and this film might feel like a more than serviceable addition to the growing pantheon of films about the industry. Unfortunately, Babylon is far too bloated, symbolic perhaps of the troubling tendency of industry execs throwing money at young directors, with debatable potential, and inert craftsmanship. Perhaps, it takes the highest of stages, to expose you for the artistic voice you maybe never were. Babylon isn’t all bust, or even unwatchable, it is just overlong, overindulgent with nary a care for one too many orgies.

Babylon is streaming on BookMyShow Stream

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

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