Film Review – Babylon

It’s a little strange to face a film year where two completely different movies basically cover the same story. In May, there was “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” which included a subplot about silent cinema actors facing a cold reality when “talkies” become all the rage, forcing them to deal with a sudden upheaval in their careers. “Babylon” explores the same space in a more epic manner, losing good manners and buttery melodrama for a messy, 188-minute-long journey into excess. One picture had tasteful encounters between troubled characters, while the other opens with an extended shot of an elephant defecating on its handlers, chased by a shot of a prostitute urinating into the mouth of her obese client. It certainly can’t be said that writer/director Damien Chazelle (“La La Land”) isn’t going for something with “Babylon,” but what that something is isn’t easy to understand. The helmer wants explosions of raucous behavior, trying to encourage overkill as a way to celebrate the Roaring Twenties, but the feature is mostly exhausting, with Chazelle caught up in his ability to summon chaos, leaving little room for compelling drama to take shape. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com