Babylon, Damien Chazelle's proudly, grotesquely too-much flashback to the backlots and bacchanals of Hollywood's silent era, begins with an elephant projectile crapping all over his wrangler and the camera. Chazelle's camera dollies and pans and Steadicams relentlessly through the debauchery, as if to say, "Isn't this wild?" Babylon plainly takes its cues (and title) from Kenneth Anger's widely discredited Hollywood Babylon, a history of scandals heavier on salacious gossip than verifiable facts. Are we meant to mourn the death of a party Chazelle paints as destructively hedonistic? Did Chazelle cast Robbie partially for the Wolf of Wall Street and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood associations her presence would confer?

Source: The Star December 24, 2022 00:05 UTC