Babylon is excess to the extreme and that's one of its many commendable qualities

 "You don't get to hate it unless you love it." So goes one of the most memorable lines in The Last Black Man in San Francisco. It's also a piece of dialogue that feels appropriate for Babylon, writer/director Damien Chazelle's new movie that takes audiences back to 1920s Hollywood. Here, Chazelle explores stunning excess in the form of lavish parties and the dark nature of the American film industry. The way this filmmaker holds up a microscope to the brutal and even downright dehumanizing aspects of this industry could only come from someone who loves this era, its artists, and the art they produced. You can be conscious of something's flaws and still adore it. Babylon is a reminder of that. Its onscreen debauchery and darkest moments remind us all of the horrors of the film industry while its strengths as a piece of art serve as a fiery reminder of the power of movies. It's all such an entertaining and thoughtful whirlwind of a movie that you too will come to share the "love" that drove Chazelle's creative vision.

Babylon begins in 1927, with much of the story being told through the eyes of Manny Torres (Diego Galva). He starts out the movie as just an assistant at big Hollywood parties, helping to transport elephants and get drugs for any of the partygoers. At one of these events, Torres meets Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a wannabe starlet who harbors dreams as big as her weak spot for cocaine and gambling. From here, Babylon charts Torres, LaRoy, and a handful of other characters, like a silent movie legend named Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) and trumpet player Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), navigating the wild world of filmmaking in this era. This is already a turbulent industry full of unpredictability before the introduction of sound cinema comes into play and begins to phase out every aspect of silent movies, including the actors who flourished in this dialogue-free domain.

The turmoil caused for actors in the transition from silent movies to sound has always been a source of fascination for period piece features, as seen in Singin' in the Rain and The Artist. Babylon attempts to differentiate itself from the pack in several key ways, including reveling in all the debauchery it can imagine depicting the ribald excesses of the 1920s. Within the first ten minutes, elephant defecation and human urine are shown up on-screen, while drugs and nudity pepper every inch of the frame. In weaker hands, this could've been a try-hard attempt at being "edgy," but Chazelle finds a foolproof way of making all this ribald material work: make it entertaining.

The opening party scene of Babylon is incredibly riveting filmmaking, full stop. It's hard to think about any other period-era movies set in the 1920s that also wallowed in filth when you're trying to absorb every detail Babylon is throwing at you in this whiz-bang opening. This kick-off to the story see's Chazelle's camera in an incredibly confident mode as it soars through crowds of people, all covered in such richly-realized colorful costumes. Justin Hurwitz's score injects so much vibrant energy into the frame, particularly a track called "Voodoo Mama" on the soundtrack that combines an energetic and sometimes screeching trumpet and equally lively clapping. All these elements combine to make it feel like you're on the ground floor of all this glorious excess. It's tremendously impressive material peppered with great subtle sight gags, like a clearly pregnant woman partying her heart out, and punctuated with effective reminders of stark mortality that no amount of partying can fully escape. What a blast of a way to kick off a movie! 

This tour de force opening establishes the scope, debauchery, and complicated tone of Babylon that follows and it turns out to be a great place to spend three hours. What can I say? I'm a sucker for a movie with a sweeping enough scale to blow your socks off before its title card fills up the screen. All that mesmerizing mayhem is paired up with an increasingly discernible melancholy tone, with the latter bordering on apocalyptic towards the end of Babylon. It also helps that Chazelle's talent for realizing precisely-edited slices of intense cinema (see: Whiplash and First Man) is as alive as ever here (he's working with his go-to editor here, Tom Cross). Even better, this filmmaker gets to demonstrate a great talent for handling comedy. The same keen sense of timing he and Cross brought to sequences of J.K. Simmons berating Miles Teller on the drums is here exquisitely applied to memorable demonstrations of dark comedy. An early sequence depicting that cuts between the various troubles of filming a massive period-era battle sequence is an especially great demonstration of this.

Inevitably, in reaching for the stars, Chazelle's screenplay does stumble in certain respects, especially in the second half of the movie which jumps around a lot more in time. Certain character dynamics, like a friendship between Torres and Palmer, could've been fleshed out more and there are traces of ham-fisted dialogue (like Torres blatantly telling somebody over the phone "everything is about to change!" in obvious ADR after his character watches moviegoers go gaga for The Jazz Singer) peppered throughout the screenplay. I suspect the latter is the inevitable result of making a feature for a major American movie studio that costs more than $10 million (studios don't want pricey investments to be too incoherent for mainstream moviegoers), but those lines could've been more organically-realized within those confines.

But what really sticks out in my mind roughly 24 hours after watching Babylon isn't those flaws but the sights, the sounds, the laughs, and the ominous air coursing through the whole movie. That ominousness extends to Babylon's fascinatingly complicated attitude toward movies as an artform. Chazelle and company clearly have a lot of love for films, what they can do, and even the wackadoodle dedication it takes to make any of these features a reality. But he's also cognizant of the American film industry being a nightmarish place rather than something from a clean-cut magazine. The characters in Babylon never get ahead in this industry unless it comes at the expense of somebody else or even their own souls. Even the film's decadent opening sequences, which characters like Conrad eventually look back on fondly, feature frequent reminders of pitch-black reality.

Much like how the parties in Boogie Nights were laced with instances of disturbing behavior, even the "good times" for the characters of Babylon have a selfishness and darkness to them. Being cognizant of these nuances is one of Babylon's greatest strengths and lends a lasting sense of impact to the feature beyond being a sweeping visual and auditory exercise. Film itself is a beautiful medium full of rich power that can't be replicated in any other medium. It's also a tool that (in America) is built on the legacy of D.W. Griffith and has often been used to suppress voices while it's supposedly inspiring people. Similarly, one can love sound films while mourning all the lost opportunities for artists that specialized in silent film. It's with this attitude that Babylon crafts a compelling ode to films that also mourns an industry that treated its artists like cogs in a machine and not people (good thing entertainment companies don't do that anymore!)

All these rich themes and a willingness to depict the various film artists of the 1920s as people offer a great canvas for the actors of Babylon to work with. Margot Robbie especially excels in these confines, delivering a performance that carries a captivating aura (you can never take your eyes off her) emanating from how naturally she conveys aching pain creeping in through the margins of a confident exterior. She's just as game for moments where Babylon wants to contemplate mortality as she is when the film wants to engage in a lengthy vomit gag. Juggling those disparate pieces with entertaining and insightful success also makes Babylon as an entire movie an incredibly stirring watch. Come for all the raunchy spectacle and incredible score, stay for Chazelle and company demonstrating a burning passion for an era they love enough to critique.