Some movies are just too ambitious for their own good.  Babylon sets itself up to be the ultimate tell-all on the early days of Hollywood, chronicling not just the journey from silent pantomime to stereo sound and Technicolor and beyond, but how the cultural eras evolved and changed from the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression.  It’s a rags to riches to rags again story that has been told many times before, albeit not with such wild abandon, such promiscuity and profanity and problematic behavior.  Unfortunately, this story is not just ambitious and complex; it’s schizophrenic and ultimately, rather empty.

Writer-director Damien Chazelle’s multi-faceted drama focuses on five major characters as they experience the end of the silent era and begin the sound era: movie star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), whose parties are legendary; movie star wannabee Nellie LeRoy (Margot Robbie), who will do anything to become famous; gossip writer Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), who has her fingers on the pulse of the industry; trumpeter Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), who has immense talent but also happens to be black in a white world; and, most importantly, young Manny Torres (Diego Calva), the Hispanic laborer who, through circumstance and fate, interacts with and befriends Jack and Nellie and eventually becomes an important player himself.  It is through Manny’s wide-open eyes and outsider’s perspective that we the immense promise of the cinema and the opulent decadence in which its creators so often partake, simply because they can.

I’m all for Hollywood self-examination; when it is done well it can be brilliant; The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is a prime example.  Plenty of other films celebrate the joys and perils of moviemaking from Day for Night to The Fabelmans.  Yet Babylon aspires to something more, I think.  My one viewing of its 189 minutes tells me that it wants to celebrate the process of making worthwhile, artistic material — as wonderfully described by Jack Conrad after his wild party, and experienced by Manny Torres when he sees much of his own history visualized in a screening of Singin’ in the Rain — but it also wants to castigate the entire industry as immature, exorbitant and even irrelevant, a message that it reinforces over and over and over during its long running time.  At the same time it values film over human life (several times people are killed during the process, without a passing thought) and yet it considers those very movies unimportant and trivial.  About the nicest thing Chazelle has to say about Hollywood is that at least it’s not as barbaric and hideous as the subterranean world beneath L. A. in the 1930s, a visualization that he stages in ugly detail during a far-too-long sequence involving creepy gangster James McKay (Tobey Maguire, playing unsuccessfully against type).  At least Hollywood is not that bad, Chazelle is saying.

Perhaps this effort and expense would all be worth something if the film were true-to-life.  While many of the characters are based on real people, or composites of several real people, the verisimilitude of the piece is diluted and diminished by fictionalizing so much of it.  For example, Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) is made out to be a Major Movie Star by dint of his big estate, his extravagant party, his talks with Manny after his big bender and the deference which other characters show him.  Supposedly based on John Gilbert, Conrad has trouble adapting to the sound era and it is Elinor St. John who, symbolically at least, finishes off his storied career with a rather innocuous interview that turns out to be a hatchet job.  When he confronts her she gives an impassioned speech about appreciating his time at the top, but that time has passed.  Here’s the thing: Chazelle never supports Conrad’s foundation as a Major Movie Star.  It’s all circumstantial.  We never see or hear any of his background, how or why he has become the King of Hollywood.  None of his films are known to us; he is barely seen acting at all.  I think Conrad has less than two minutes of actual screen time, and during some of that he is being unfairly ridiculed.  Watching the film I wasn’t actually sure that Jack Conrad was an actor; he might just as easily been a producer or a bigwig studio executive.  I think the film trades on Brad Pitt’s own stardom and presence for modern audiences to fill in the blanks as to Jack’s position and power.  That didn’t really work for me.

If Jack Conrad is supposed to be John Gilbert, that is a long stretch, and it’s not the only one.  Provocative sapphic Asian entertainer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li) is supposed to be Anna May Wong?  Another stretch.  Some real Hollywood people are mentioned or discussed; Irving Thalberg (Max Minghella) and Marion Davies (Chloe Fineman) actually make appearances, although not positive ones.  But I found the mix of fictional and real to be uncomfortable and somewhat exhausting, as there are so many characters and subplots to follow.  At least Mr. Chazelle did not skimp on the star power; supporting roles are filled by the familiar faces and forms of Lukas Haas, Olivia Wilde, Kaia Gerber, Patrick Fugit, Eric Roberts, Samara Weaving, Katherine Waterston, Phoebe Tonkin, Ethan Suplee, Flea, Jeff Garlin and Joe Dallesandro.

There is a lot of material here and I am bound to admit that further viewings would almost certainly reveal deeper aspects than I recognized the first time around.  That being said, however, so much of what is presented here is outlandish and unpleasant.  The opening party sequence, which lasts somewhere around twenty minutes, is a melange of debauchery hard to unsee.  It sets the tone for the rest of the story.  The long Nellie LeRoy sound movie sequence is fascinating and harrowing, but it’s missing the punchline: did he get the shot?  And the tribute sequence that centers around Singin’ in the Rain goes way past 1952 in its effort to prove that cinema is worthwhile, and that’s an effort that seems like it is trying way too hard to ask for forgiveness for all the indulgences beforehand.

It does not surprise me that this ambitious movie was not a hit.  Despite the star power, the debauchery on screen, the absolute sexiness of Margot Robbie (who really is excellent) and the film-friendly material which should appeal to cinephiles like myself, this movie is sometimes tough to watch and appreciate.  It’s one thing to be self-critical about the industry; this movie is sometimes incendiary.  Ultimately, what message is it conveying?  That’s the big question.  ☆ ☆.  7 May 2025.