TOP OF THE HEAP

“Babylon” and Corsage.”

- ANTHONY LANE

How much is too much? Try Babylon,” the latest film from Damien Chazelle. Within five minutes, we realize that excess is in the air—and, indeed, all over the camera lens, in the form of elephant dung. The ensuing half hour, an excursion into the orgiastic, brings us a woman peeing onto the bloated belly of a partygoer, alpine hills of cocaine, and a dwarf using a giant phallus as a pogo stick. Still to come: a movie producer walking around in the desert, at night, with his head stuck in a toilet seat, and, by way of a bonne bouche, toward the end of the feast, a guy who consumes live rats. Happy now?

This is a film about films and filming. It would swallow itself if it could. Much of the saga, which kicks off in 1926, is set in Hollywood, and in the blast area that surrounds it. Our guide to the festivities is Manny Diego Calva), who rises from the rank of lowly fixer to that of studio executive, yet never achieves the solidity of a main character. At the initial soirée, he falls for a gadabout named Nellie LaRoy Margot Robbie), who can't park a car without crashing into a statue, and who caps off her evening with a crowd surf. She, too, will reach undreamed-of heights. Tellingly, both she and Manny begin their ascent on the day after the debauch; he becomes a personal assistant to an affable superstar, Jack Conrad Brad Pitt), while Nellie, at short notice, gets the opportunity to flaunt her acting skills. This she does with gusto—hoofing, grinning, and turning her tears on and off like a plumber fixing a faucet.