Babylon: Living life kink sized… Is this hat-tip to Hollywood’s debauchery in the 1920s a debauched work?

The backlash against Damien Chazelle’s Babylon has been severe. Most critics have dismissed this savage depiction of the mythic debauchery in Hollywood during its transitional phase from silent to talkies circa 1920 and 30s, as a work that is more debauched than the universe it recreates so diligently. I think once the heat and dust settle down and people stop judging the characters and their repugnant antics rather than the film itself, much of the filth would seem like an organic part of the narrative rather than a device meant to shock. Babylon, now streaming on Prime Video, is shocking in its graphic portrayal of decadence in Hollywood. At more than three hours of playing-time, I wished Chazelle would lower the ferocity of the whiplash in the slovenly decadence of La La Land. Both of Chazelle’s earlier films Whiplash and La La Land were far gentler, although the former was about physical and emotional abuse by the teacher over the taught. Babylon explores the free-flowing hedonism of Hollywood during a time when they needed to work the hardest to make that tricky transition from silence to sound. But here they are living life kink sized and throwing away, at times throwing up, the chances of finding a place in the transitional hierarchy. Flush with fiendish funds of Epicureanism , Babylon is not your average Hollywood look-see with cute picture-perfect images of periodicity. It goes the whole hog and emerges with bloody hands and even bloodier lips. I still haven’t gotten over the vivid revulsion in the sequence where a bestial man eats a live rabbit in a dungeon straight from hell. Robbie Margot is bitten by a deadly sake as the party guests watch in open-mouthed horror. No one does anything. They are all in it for fun as mute spectators. Then a Chinese American actress Fay ( Li Jun Li) comes forward to suck the poison out of Margot. Margot as Nelli LaRoy the smalltime-actress-going-on-big with no inhibitions or filter, is a ‘farce’ of nature. She is at once the vixen and the vamp, the ingénue and the tramp. Margot gives a rousing primeval performance. Brad Pitt as the silent superstar struggling for success in the new era of sound, has seldom been more contemptuous of ‘Hollywood stardom’ which Pitt himself represents so aptly. I loved the sequence in which movie critic Elinor St John (Jean Smart, fabulous) tells Pitt’s character Jack Conrad why he has ceased to matter to Hollywood and why it is prudent for him to accept his downfall. In Babylon the quiet moments are non-negotiable. The blare of bacchanalia splits the screen wide open to reveal the yawning emptiness of a world defeated by its own appetites. At the centre of the raucous representation of a rapidly burning-out universe is the desperate love story of the gentle thoughtful sensible rookie Manny Torres(Diego Calva) and the wild untameable Nellie, whom he could never get. We get it.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News,  India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and Instagram