EXCESS BAGGAGE (BABYLON)
In Hollywood, there's ambition and sometimes there's reckless ambition.
Many filmmakers' careers have floundered because of the latter.
The man behind 'The Deer Hunter,' Michael Cimino arguably never got over the spectacular flop at the box office that was 'Heaven's Gate' - even though that epic Western has undergone something of a critical reappraisal, thanks to several Directors Cuts.
Francis Coppola's career suffered after his dream of setting up and running his own film studio, Zoetrope ended in bankruptcy.
© Paramount PicturesHorror director John Carpenter arguably never recovered from the critical and commercial mauling his sci-fi horror adventure 'Ghosts of Mars' received in 2001.
Oscar winning director Damian Chazelle may suffer similar fate after the spectacular commercial failure of 'Babylon' - an epic film about excess in the early days of cinema.
Starring Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Katherine Waterston, Lukas Haas and Tobey Maguire, you can see why Paramount Pictures would have had high hopes for a film by the director of 'Whiplash,' 'La La Land' and 'First Man'.
However a polarising response from critics, sluggish box office and an underwhelming awards season will no doubt be considered as a huge setback for the 38 year old's career.
© Paramount PicturesSet in 1926, 'Babylon' centres around Diego Calva's Mexican immigrant Manny Torres who is hired in Bel Air to help shift an elephant up a mountain to the mansion of a silent cinema studio executive, Jeff Harlin's Don Wallach.
The elephant is just one attraction in a very debauched party where cocaine and champagne freely flow and orgies take place to the sound of a live jazz band.
While helping manage this excess, Manny falls under the spell of Margot Robbie's Nellie LaRoy, a New Jersey woman who turns up with the intention of catching the eyes of studio chiefs and becoming a major star.
Manny has big dreams too.
© Paramount Pictures relay aHowever he's immediately intoxicated by Nellie's magnetic star quality.
And while they initially hit it off, he's soon called upon to carry actress Phoebe Tonkin's Jane Thornton away from the party following an overdose in the company of Troy Metcalfe's depraved Fatty Arbuckle-style comedy star, Orville Pickwick.
While Manny cleans up the mess, Nellie dazzles partygoers with a flamboyant dance and is spotted by studio execs who ask her to replace Jane Thornton in a Kinoscope Western melodrama.
When the party peters out, Manny ends up taking Brad Pitt's heavy drinking matinee idol Jack Conrad home to the star's plush mansion and lands a job as his personal assistant.
© Paramount PicturesJack is rarely sober and continues to booze while shooting an epic in which he plays a knight in shining armour.
Meanwhile while making her screen debut, Nellie outrageously steals the show from under the nose of Samara Weaving's lead actress Constance Moore by acting crudely during the shooting of a saloon scene.
Nellie's star quickly rises, with Jean Smart's gossip columnist Elinor St John taking a keen interest in her.
Manny also rises through the studio ranks.
© Paramount PicturesBut then, sound comes to the cinema thanks to 'The Jazz Singer,' sending tremors throughout the business.
As studios scramble to greenlight movies which deploy the new technology, Jack and Nellie struggle with its demands.
Away from work, Nellie has other problems too.
A hedonistic lifestyle of drug taking, heavy drinking and gambling soon catches up with her.
© Paramount PicturesCan Manny save Nellie from herself?
Can he also rescue her from Tobey Maguire's eccentric but brutal gangster James McKay?
Can Jack protect his career, while other silent cinema idols struggle with the advent of sound?
Given that 'Babylon' is all about the dangers of excess, Chazelle really goes all out in his depiction of the hedonistic lifestyles of the pioneers of early cinema.
© Paramount PicturesIn fact his sprawling three hour epic goes to DW Griffith lengths to chronicle the wild parties of the stars and their studio chiefs and their even wilder film shoots.
The film is a blaze of colour, noise and debauchery.
Even in its basest moments, Chazelle doesn't hold back depicting fountains of elephant poo, vomit, urination and vigorous orgiastic sex.
A man eats live rats in one sequence and Nellie fights a rattlesnake in another.
© Paramount Pictures'Bablyon' is simply that kind of film.
However it shouldn't simply be dismissed as an uncomfortable film about the industry's lurid past.
It's an impressively crafted meditation on the crushing of dreams.
Chazelle, who wrote the script, rides both horses, however, with varying degrees of success.
© Paramount PicturesAny dewy eyed nostalgia for what Hollywood might have been is drowned out by the repulsiveness of the behaviour depicted onscreen.
And while there are many things to celebrate about Chazelle's film, its so fixated on excesses you can't help feeling the movie has run away with itself.
Technically, Chazelle's film is dazzlingly made with Linus Sandgren's cinematography making clever nods to silent cinema classics like Griffith's 'Intolerance', Florencia Martin and Anthony Carlino's opulent production design and Mary Zophres' ornate costumes understandably making jaws drop.
There's a pulsating jazz score too by Justin Hurwitz.
© Paramount PicturesHowever at a running time of just over three hours, 'Babylon' cannot help but feel like a lot of studio films these days bloated.
Chazelle's film feels like a series of over the top set sequencs somehow strung together by a plot that sags and sometimes reverts to cliche.
The performances vary in quality too.
Margot Robbie turns in a firecracker of a performance as the Clara Bow-like Nellie.
© Paramount PicturesSome audiences may struggle, though, with a film that asks us to sympathise with a character who is exhibitionist and will stop at very little on the path to stardom.
Jean Smart and Li Jun Li as the mysterious lesbian cabaret singer Lady Fay Zhu impress in supporting roles.
Diego Calva is accessible enough, even if he slavishly follows the trope of the lovelorn guy who just can't get the girl.
Pitt turns in a by the numbers performance as a fading Clark Gable or Douglas Fairbanks style cad, while Maguire is over the top as the gangster.
© Paramount PicturesWith distracting cameos from the likes of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers' Flea, The Strokes' Albert Hammond Jr, Eric Roberts and Spike Jonze, other actors like Katherine Waterston, Olivia Wilde, Jeff Garlin and Lukas Haas feel underused in the roles of a stage actress, Jack's ex wife, a studio executive and a suicidal film producer.
This is typical of a film that is at times infuriating and on other occasions a glorious failure.
'Babylon' is ambitious, bordering on reckless.
Yet for all its flaws, there's enough in there to make an impassioned case for Chazelle to continue to be supported by investors.
© Paramount PicturesIt's far from perfect but there are undoubtedly moments of technical brilliance.
Hopefully its failings will be regarded as a blip in a promising career.
Chazelle has the ability to do much more with less.
('Babylon' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on January 20, 2023)
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