Perfection. Legacy. More than anything, it is the pursuit of both that drives the principal players in a Damien Chazelle picture. Between a jazz drummer obsessed with finding the right tempo, a stoic astronaut making a giant leap for mankind, and a couple with dreams of making it big in Los Angeles, Chazelle’s characters almost always manifest the very best and indeed very worst facets in the search for greatness. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly then, such ideas once again come to the fore in Chazelle’s newest film, Babylon, his most ambitious outing to date. But rather than simmer to the surface in this sprawling 1920s-era epic, they explode in a delirious, sex-and-drug-fuelled rush of excess.

And it’s one such lurid episode that begins Chazelle’s sweeping ode to cinema in Babylon. An outlandish Hollywood orgy of narcotics, booze, writhing bodies and exotic animals introduces the story’s central characters: suave screen icon Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt); the brilliant but undervalued musician Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo); moviestruck Mexican Manny Torres (impressive newcomer Diego Calva), through whose eyes the audience is pulled into this destructively alluring world. And then there’s Nellie LaRoy (a typically excellent Margot Robbie), a spontaneous, care-free wild child intent on seeing her talents realised. “You don’t become a star. You either are one or you ain’t,” she tells Manny. “I am one.”

Scored by Chazelle’s long-time collaborator Justin Hurwitz and shot with suitably kinetic verve by cinematographer Linus Sandgren, the raucous opening sequence – as well as the film at large – encapsulates the era’s toxic blend of lavish appeal and its vulgar, sweaty self-indulgence. Change, however, is on the horizon in Hollywood as the release of the industry’s first ‘talkies’ threaten to change the moviemaking landscape forever and, in doing so, condemn the silent flicks, as well as its stars, to the annals of history.

Somewhat ironically then, given its mammoth 189-minute run, there’s a growing sense in Babylon of time running out. Jack and Nellie face the prospect of being left behind while Manny and Sidney are regularly forced to reinvent themselves and, in one alarming scene involving Palmer and blackface makeup, compromise who they are entirely. 

Thus, amid the film’s interweaving subplots and vibrant set pieces unfurl weighty ideas about identity, cultural assimilation, and one’s inability to outrun their own mortality and the growing shadow of irrelevance. 

And yet, despite the dense thematic melting pot and hefty production budget, Babylon showcases both the highs and lows of a gifted filmmaker seemingly working without constraint. Several moments are mesmerising: a party that ends with LaRoy fighting a rattlesnake; a long, exhilarating sequence on the set of a historical epic with hundreds of extras, an eccentric, Erich von Stroheim-esque director (Spike Jonze in an uncredited role), and an increasingly intoxicated Conrad. 

As a film, Babylon feels overly long and wildly uneven, its more poignant, emotional moments frustratingly sparse and largely underdeveloped. And, at its core, Chazelle’s film seems to struggle with the contradiction of what he calls “a hate letter to Hollywood and a love letter to movies.” The story itself seems to speak to the contrary, often suggesting the two are intrinsically linked: that the much-adored screen classics would, and could, not exist without the brutal, cutthroat nature of the Hollywood machine. 

In the end, like the drug-fuelled frenzies it depicts, Babylon is a delirious, unhinged thrill of a film. But it’s a high it simply cannot sustain for its duration. 

Dir. Damien Chazelle (18, 189 mins)

Babylon is out now in cinemas

words GEORGE NASH