Babylon

Hoo boy. Babylon is A Lot. A LOT. I don't even know where to begin with how A Lot Babylon is. There's the first half hour, which takes place at an insane Hollywood party and tracks at least half a dozen characters in a Robert Altman-meets-Baz Luhrmann-remaking-Caligula-together feeling. That whole first half an hour is indulgence and hedonism writ large. Nudity and sex and drugs and depravity EVERYWHERE. It sets the tone for the rest of the movie; in both a literal and thematic sense. This movie is going for wild swings and is going to show it to the viewer in exhaustive, almost uncomfortable detail. The insanity isn't as densely packed over the rest of the movie as it is the first 30 minutes, but it never really stops either. If you can't make it through that first half an hour, just stop. What follows that half hour is a mesmerizing whirlwind of intertwining and parallel stories. A hopeful ingenue looking to become the star she believes herself to be, but is also her own worst enemy. A matinee idol with a tumultuous personal life staring down the barrel of middle age. A young man who finds himself swept into Hollywood's behind-the-scenes life who was never really meant to be there. An AA bandleader who is pulled into becoming a movie star but is always reminded of his status as a second-class citizen because of his race. An Asian-American performer who has to face being idolized for being "exotic", all the while facing industry backlash for her sexuality. All this, plus half a dozen other smaller characters, all set against the backdrop of when movies transitioned from silent to talkies, putting the industry into upheaval as it tried to figure out if the silent stars of yesterday had value when they had to speak. That is a major theme of the movie: Hollywood's relentless chewing up, digesting, and spitting out of the people who make its product. Actors, directors, producers, nobody is immune from the machine, and the machine is heartless and relentless. Babylon shows this in how Brad Pitt's matinee idol character struggles to keep his status during the switch, or how Margot Robbie's wild child from Jersey antics are harder to hide when she has to speak, or how Jovan Adepo's bandleader has to face the reality that his status as an actor does nothing to mollify the realities of race relations in the 1920's. Babylon uses multiple characters to show how Hollywood will roll on with or without someone, that star power is ephemeral, that nobody is immune in front of or behind the camera, and the most important word in "show business" is the second one. To quote indie rock legends Fugazi, "cool's eternal but it's always dated". Does it need to tell that story with multiple characters? Probably not. Was Hollywood the chaotic maelstrom Babylon portrays it as? I have my doubts. That may be Babylon's biggest fault. This movie wants to push the boundaries. It's not crass or tasteless, but it is unfiltered and indulgent. It keeps trying to one-up itself. It starts to become somewhat numbing after a while, because there's only so far it can go without veering into NC-17 (or XXX) territory. At some point, all the cocaine and nudity and guns and bacchanalia stop having an impact, because three hours of it is just too much. I never stopped being interested, but I stopped being surprised. For a movie that is trying to be shocking at every turn, there's only so long it can keep it up before the law of diminishing returns sets in. It's also not a subtle movie. Even taking out the first half hour, just the way it discusses its themes, it is as blunt as a caveman's club. This movie is 100% surface level. I could also say it isn't trying to be anything but surface level, which can be commendable. But again, we run into the problem of the movie's length; being bludgeoned with the same concept, without any shred of subtext, for 3 hours, is exhausting. When I stopped to take a bathroom break, I noticed we were only an hour in, and I was sure it was two. There is just so much happening at all times, and it is all big, loud, and abrasive. I said it before, and I'll say it again: Babylon is A Lot. I may sound harsher than a 4/5, but it's more of a warning than anything. I get why this movie is divisive. I get why some people put this on their worst of the year. It is a bloated mess of a movie. It is as unsubtle as a hand grenade. It pummels your senses into submission. But it's also never boring. It is always visually engaging. Every performer -- especially Margot Robbie -- is throwing everything they got into this. As much as it left me tired afterwards and needing to watch something profoundly stupid as an antidote, I don't regret seeing it at all. It is a car crash of a movie, but it is a mesmerizing one.