BABYLON (2022)

The last big prestige item to get this much wrong about old Hollywood was another money pit from Paramount, THE LAST TYCOON/’76, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s clueless if beautifully written M-G-M oriented roman à clef, embalmed by a sadly diminished Elia Kazan with an all-star cast of sleepwalkers.*  This 3+ hour marathon, set in the chaotic chasm of Silent-to-Sound transition (1926-1932) also out from (and about) Paramount, as well as M-G-M and largely focused on stand-ins for two great silent stars who succumbed to The Talkies: M-G-M’s John Gilbert (Brad Pitt) and Paramount’s Clara Bow (Margot Robbie).  Skipping the discipline of holding to actual personalities & facts, writer/director Damien Chazelle wants to have his cake & eat it too, going off the charts whenever something outrageous seems dramatically convenient.  Harold Robbins brought much the same shock & shlock ethos back in the ‘60s, fictionalizing Howard Hughes’ Hollywood beginnings with THE CARPETBAGGERS.  A big hit in 1964 for (wait for it) Paramount.  Crap, but all of a piece.  Here, nothing feels right, even chewing gum & camera cranking speeds inauthentic, to say nothing of Chazelle’s OTT set pieces.  (Chazelle’s takeaway moral seems to be that bacchanals were Gardens of Hedonism before sound turned them into Dungeons of Dragons & Geeks.)  Crucially, he misses half the melancholic tone by casting too old.  Pitt may look great for 60, but Gilbert was all done by his early 30s.  Robbie, looking frizzy & frazzled from beginning to end, may only be 32, but Bow’s career took off when she was a round-faced 17.  (She never did lose the round face.)  And who is the Black trumpet man supposed to be?  Good for current demographics, but the idea that a $1,500  Black-aimed musical short subject would either start or threaten a film exec’s career is a stretch.  It does allow Chazelle to feed his penchant for zippy tracking shots directly into the horn’s ‘bell.’  Finally there's Señor Outsider, the lowly go-fer who rises to studio exec before spiraling out of contention after doing someone a good turn.  Played by camera (if not vocally) ready Diego Calva, he’s our eyes & ears even if nothing about him or his journey makes sense.  They say there’s no justice in Hollywood, but this one did lose 100 mill.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  As mentioned above, THE CARPETBAGGERS still entertaining junk-food.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-carpetbaggers-1964.html   *And for masochists:  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/last-tycoon-1976.html