Movie Review: 'Babylon' is an Ambitious Beautiful Disaster

Babylon (2022)

Directed by Damian Chazelle

Written by Damian Chazelle

Starring Margot Robbe, Brad Pitt,

Release Date December 25th, 2022

Published December 12th, 2022

Babylon is an outright disaster. From minute one to minute last, this careening, gross, nightmare of Hollywood decadence never finds its feet. The point, I assume, is for the movie to be dizzying and disorienting, but it's a little too effective at evoking that feeling. It's nice to be on wild ride but Babylon rarely relents to let you catch your breath. That might be okay if we were more invested in the characters caught up in this tornado of activity but these characters are too thin and stock for us to cling to them amid the storm.

Babylon stars Margot Robbe as Nellie LaRoy, an ambitious young actress, eager to be the biggest star in the world while also being the biggest personality in every room. We meet Nellie at a party where she comes bursting in, in search of cocaine. Nellie finds what she's looking for with the aid of Manny Torres (Diego Calva), an assistant to the Hollywood heavyweight who is throwing this massive party. The party happens to have an entire room full of cocaine which Nellie gobbles up quickly and with abandon.

Urging Manny to abandon his job, tending to the party guests, Nellie gets him enjoying the cocaine as well and the two develop a quick friendship, though it's clear that Manny is smitten. Circumstances part the new friends as the wild party finds a woman dying from an overdose that requires Manny to move her body as a large elephant Manny procured earlier gives cover to the body being smuggled out the back door of the expansive party.

The dead girl is fortuitous for Nellie as the young woman was supposed to play a big role in a movie the following day. Nellie is spotted at the party and tapped to take the dead girl's place. Working on no sleep, running on pure adrenalin and cocaine, Nellie nails the part with her incredible talent for crying on command. This is a silent movie breakthrough for Nellie as the camera clearly loves her while the lack of lines needing to be memorized or performed, means her deep New Jersey accent is covered up.

Meanwhile, Manny is tasked with tending to the needs of Hollywood's top leading man, Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt). After driving the drunken Conrad home, and watching him nearly die in a pool accident, Manny is invited to help Conrad get to the set of his newest blockbuster that same day. This means maybe an hour of sleep before a 16 hour day on set. Even with the exhaustion, the stars in Manny's eyes drive him to become essential to the finishing of the picture.

It's Manny who gets the task or renting a new camera after several other cameras were destroyed in the midst of the epic filming of fight scenes involving local drunks and homeless men playing Roman soldiers. Manny saves the day and his career as a Hollywood Producer, Director, and all around go-to guy begins. Naturally, this will bring him back into the orbit of Nellie though it appears that any romance between the two just isn't in the cards. Manny and Nellie appear to be star-crossed for life.

The middle portion of the three hour car wreck that is Babylon, deals with the arrival of the talking picture in Hollywood. Nellie and Jack's careers are devastated by sound. For Nellie, having to memorize lines, being unable to move around under the strictures of a new sound set up, and her New Jersey accent, stunt her career just as she was becoming a big star. Jack meanwhile, doesn't know how to project his star power with his voice. Suddenly, the period piece romances that had been his bread and butter, seem silly with his modern American accent.

Manny, on the other hand, appears to thrive. He becomes a big deal at the studio where he works. He's a director and a producer and he oversees several film projects at once. Among his best work is making a star of a little known trumpet player. Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo) was seen at the party where the film opened and from there was hired to score some silent films. With Manny in charge, and sound pictures becoming a massive hit, Sidney becomes a superstar on the big screen, though not without some compromises that he's not all that comfortable with.

Manny's fortunes turn on his attempts to save Nellie's career. As her career flounders, Nellie tries and fails to get clean, getting off cocaine and alcohol, but she's quickly sucked back into her addictions as she struggles in the sound era. Her career is officially flushed following an incident at the home of William Randolph Hearst where Nellie clashes with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies, and refuses to allow the famed newspaper magnate to grope her. How this scene ends is weird and gross, and a strong referendum as to whether you are willing to buy in on director Damian Chazelle's odd vision of Babylon.

For me, I was out of Babylon just minutes into the start of the movie. One of the first things to happen in Babylon is an elephant pooping in epic fashion all over a poor day laborer. The metaphor is clear, the little people in Hollywood, the ones who make life possible for the rich, famous and powerful, are getting pooped on. In this case, that's not just a metaphor. A few short scenes later we're forced to confront a man with a fetish for being urinated on. And to make sure we cover all of our grossest bases, the Hearst mansion scene ends with vomiting that would make Mr. Creosote blush.

Why all of the poop and urine and vomit? I don't know, it certainly doesn't add anything to the story of Babylon. I can assume it is meant as a counterpoint to the classic glamor of silent era Hollywood but I am sure that there must have been a way to accomplish the same juxtaposition without so thoroughly turning the audiences stomachs. It's not pointless gratuitousness but it certainly doesn't make an already tedious movie any more enjoyable.

Babylon is a punishing filmgoing experience. Much of the appeal relies on poor young newcomer Diego Calva as our insert character. Sadly, Calva is a bit of a dud in the role. He's not a bad actor but opposite the massive starpower of Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, he's completely overmatched. That's unfortunate because he carries most of the dramatic weight of this three hour plus movie. As the story vacillates amid the massive sea-change between silent and sound, we are left adrift in the madness, unable to connect with the broad performances of Pitt and Robbie and mostly uninterested in Calva whose story is mostly subject to the bigger stars.

I did find the restless energy of Babylon exciting at times. Damian Chazelle is a talented filmmaker. He's very ambitious and he has a lot of big ideas for Babylon. Sadly, his outsized ambition carried him too far here. Babylon is simply too much for any one movie. The lavish, overwhelming set pieces surrounding the dark side of 1920s Hollywood, the backstage politics, the technological revolution, and the party culture of Hollywood, is simply too much for one movie to contain.

It's not a bad thing for a movie to be dizzying and breathless but when it crosses over into being exhausting, it's gone too far. Babylon is truly exhausting. By the time the characters, supporting players, and extras, arrive in a desert where Nellie plans to fight a rattlesnake, and ends up nearly dead, I was desperate for the movie to end. There was still nearly an hour left in the movie following that scene. That scene even provides a set up for the one interesting romance in the movie but it is far too little and far too late for this to change the fortunes of Babylon.

The final act of Babylon is well shot, it looks gorgeous, but by the time we arrive at the fates of our main characters, you are likely too exhausted to have the emotional reaction the movie is clearly seeking. Certainly, the fate of Brad Pitt's Jack Conrad was intended to be weighty, emotional and shocking. Instead, it feels unearned, maudlin, and grim. Nellie's fate is beautifully handled while Manny's finale, set at a screening of Singing in the Rain, well after his moment in the Hollywood sun has ended, fails to connect the way I can only assume Chazelle intended it to.

In the end, Babylon is a mess, a highly ambitious and technically accomplished mess, but a mess all the same. Damian Chazelle has big ambition and the talent to make it all look good but he fails to settle on one over-arching idea that could bring it all together. Instead, he creates a whirling, exhausting vortex of a movie that wears out its welcome far too quickly, considering the three hour plus runtime. The star power of Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie simply isn't enough to ground the bigger, broad problems of Babylon.

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