jean smart

You have to hand it to Damian Chazelle, who should win all the awards for forewarning the audience of the three-hour-long punishment-to-come when one of his opening images is of an elephant in closeup. From the rear. Defecating straight into the camera lens. Well, shit…This is not a love letter to cinema, more like hate mail, odd coming from a director who has been treated well and lauded by his industry. And good grief, don’t summon the ghost of Singin’ in the Rain if it only serves to remind people that, yes, there are far better movies about moviemaking out there than Babylon.

Babylon traffics in riotous, bawdy, revolting excess. titles should reveal something significant about a film, so let the title Babylon serve as an announcement and a warning. Prepare, then, for wild sexual orgies, plenty of pills and drugs, tons of alcohol, projectile vomiting, explosive defecating near and on individuals, plus gratuitous, pervasive, obscene cursing. And that’s just the first half of this three-hour plus extravaganza.

A messy, bloated epic about Hollywood’s early years, Babylon is more interested in shattering the mythos of movie magic than indulging in any. Like this year’s The Fabelmans and Empire of Light, it shows characters gazing rapturously at the silver screen, but it spends the bulk of its time on behind-the-scenes grime—and rubbing our noses in it. In the opening moments alone, a frightened elephant takes a dump on a handler.