Trying to Decipher "Babylon"
Surely Damien Chazelle can be called one of the best filmmakers of the 2010s, I don't think that's a controversial claim. His newest film, "Babylon", is kind of awful and was a monstrous flop for the studio, but it's awful in a very auteur-chic sort of way. Every issue the film has (and it has plenty!) is the result of doing too much, of committing to a bad idea, which in its own way is much better than watching a bad film that has no ideas. The main hold-up I have here is that Chazelle never quite figures out the balance between "making movies is fun" and "making movies will destroy you". From the outset, nothing about the film feels fun. We are introduced to the world of silent-era Hollywood with a massive cocaine party, where people die and/or get shat on by elephants. The film is happy to show you bodily fluids of all sorts, but none of this feels appealing. I often found myself thinking of two very well known cocaine movies: Scorsese...