Babylon

A quite bonkers lit firework of a film, Babylon has quite understandably divided audiences and critics.

Launching the start of a cinematic year can put extra spotlight on a film and it’s certainly the spotlight that Babylon wants and deserves, but this is quite the departure from La La Land and Whiplash.

Taking the musicality of those two films and multiplying everything by 1000, Damien Chazelle truly lets loose here. Pitched somewhere between a Fellini-inspired acid trip and the ‘movie within a movie’ subgenre of Hail, Caesar! and co. Babylon loosely concerns four (or perhaps five) ‘main’ character threads: Brad Pitt’s fading leading man, Margot Robbie’s ’15 minutes of fame’ starlet, Diego Calva’s budding director and Jovan Adepo’s trumpeter turned actor as Hollywood moves between the silent and sound era.

The portmanteau narrative works to the extent of giving some nice variety to the three hour-plus runtime but doesn’t quite meld together as satisfactorily as a Pulp Fiction (a lofty bar to reach but a clear touchstone.) Whilst the cast are all in fine fettle here (Pitt’s recent comedic performances have been joyous and Robbie is as captivating and attention hogging as Harley Quinn whilst Calva and Adepo hold everything together) it doesn’t quite cohere as you’d hope for the runtime.

Having said that, quite a lot goes on and the set pieces are riotous. From Gatsby-style parties to quite unbelievable movie set scenes (an early scene on a movie battlefield is baffling in scale) to a fever dream gangster segway featuring a terrifying Tobey Maguire and a couple of laugh out loud moments it really is something to behold.

Amongst the mayhem there is some profound lines to find, particularly around the legacy of film and its importance. Chazelle spends too long scurrying between things to really settle on a defining through line or message (and a few tangents get dropped) but there are some nice moments, particularly when Jean Smart is on screen.

It’s kind of like a piece of Chazelle’s beloved jazz: not to all tastes, a lot of crazy tangents around a somewhat meandering centre, virtuoso players, beautiful moments and messiness.

Glorious chaos.

4 stars ****