Babylon

 

Damien Chazelle's Babylon is cinematographically so sophisticated that quibbling about its unsatisfying narrative feels petty.

But maybe pointlessness is the intended big takeaway here. That is, the pointlessness of screen stardom and the industry that puts fiction and fantasy on film and hawks them like drugs to eager audiences.

Babylon lives up to its title by shellacking viewers with unbridled debauchery. A budget of $80 million can put a lot of flesh and fluids on the screen, and Chazelle, Oscar winner for 2016's La La Land, spares no expense in delivering what in the end is an epically excessive treatment of 1920s Hollywood excessiveness.

The color and music, flash and movement are riveting -- and exhausting -- but they don't actually enhance the intertwined stories of two ambitious factotums -- Margot Robbie and Diego Calva -- who find themselves at the right time, in the right place and willing to do whatever it takes to be a part of the big show.

For Robbie's Nellie LaRoy that means cocaine and booze, and Calva's Manny, shoveling tons of shit, sometimes literally, for studio executives. They both gain access, success and power, but as we've come to learn from the scores of other Tinsel Town Tales, all of this is as tenuous as the public's taste.

Brad Pitt stars as silent movie vet Jack Conrad who finds himself increasingly redundant in an industry that is changing faster than he is able or willing to. And Jovan Adepo (Fences) plays Black trumpeter and bandleader Sidney Palmer who gets a taste of fame and wealth only to have it soured by racism. Both of their storylines are interesting but underdeveloped, especially Palmer's.

Babylon runs a little more than three hours but feels more superfluous than bloated, more smart than cunning. Lovers of film will no doubt enjoy the movie's fascination with itself, its history and the names that made Hollywood what it is.

Only the most naive will be surprised that fortunes and lives were made and lost in La La Land, although all will certainly be impressed by Chazelle's wicked imagination and daring.