Director – Damien Chazelle – 2022 – US – Cert. 18 – 188m
***1/2
The rise and fall of stars and other talents navigating the excessive lifestyle and work ethic of the silent era US movie business – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 20th
Having established himself as a top A-list Hollywood director with the likes of Whiplash (2014) and La La Land (2016), Chazelle delivers a cast of thousands epic about Hollywood in the silent era and beyond, a project that’s apparently been gestating in his head for some 15 years. With its name referencing a city that grew to great heights and considerable excess before crumbling into dust, Babylon starts with Manny Torres (Mexican actor Diego Calva in his first US role) and compatriots attempting to deliver an elephant to a Hollywood party at a desert mansion in the middle of nowhere. The tone for the whole is set – or perhaps set free from audience preconception about what is to follow – when one of Calva’s compadres, walking behind the trailer containing the creature pushing it up a hill, is unexpectedly covered in elephant excrement.

Effervescent force of nature Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) considers herself a movie star before she actually is a movie star.… Read the rest