Babylon (18)
****
When confronted with a three-hour film in which a man gets covered in Elephant dung in the first five minutes, I think it is reasonable for a viewer to wonder where it can go from there.
The answer is all over the place. It goes up, it goes down, it dazzles and it drags.
About half a decade ago, it was common to find people who really loved La La Land, Chazelle's LA musical about the enchantment and dark reality of tinsel town. But you don't hear so much of that these days.
Returning to the topic, Chazelle sends Pitt and Robbie back to Once Upon a Much Earlier Time in Hollywood, the era when the talkies arrive to wipe out silent movies.
The title comes from Kenneth Angers' salacious compendium of Hollywood tittle-tattle and sleaze, a chronicle of excess and over-indulgence that this film is equal to.
It opens with a half-hour orgy sequence, a very good place to start, where we meet our six main characters – established star Pitt, aspiring star Robbie, studio fixer Calvo, jazz musician Jovan, cabaret artist Li, and gossip columnist Smart – who will be chewed up by the Hollywood machine over the course of the movie.
It's an insane hybrid – a comic romp through degradation that takes the theme of Singin' in the Rain and sprawls it across an Altmanesque multi-strand narrative that covers everything from Eyes Wide Shut menace to The Hangover's gross-out humour.
At one point Pitt, recycling his Inglorious Basterds character to great effect, says that a movie set “is the most glorious place in the world.”
In Babylon, though they are ruthless, squalid places filled with the very worst people. Uneven doesn't begin to cover it. The opening orgy sequence, once you put the watersports aside, is actually a bit dull, but the next section, chronicling a day on a silent movie studio lot is thrilling and funny.
At times the film hurtles along at such a pace it seems like its characters can't keep up. At others it comes to a complete standstill. You feel that Avatar 2 running length. It's a film put together in chunks that don't always connect.
I'm sure a convincing case can be made for Babylon being a bad film, but for me, its berserk bravura and erratic tone made for a more compelling experience than some of the more accomplished movies plodding through this awards season.
Directed by Damien Chazelle. Starring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Jean Smart, Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li and Olivia Wilde. In cinemas. Running time: 189 mins.
Holy Spider (18)
****
This Iranian-set drama isn’t just another serial killer film, but it is another serial killer drama, of which we never run short.
It is something different, something special, but to get to that we have to go over all the familiar ground: women in danger, the brave female reporter offering herself up as bait to capture the killer. It goes over this ground extremely graphically (see the certificate.)
The Spider’s killer method was strangulation, which the film depicts in lengthy, close-up detail.
Based on a true story, Abbasi’s film takes us to the start of the century and the holy city of Mashhad where prostitutes and drug addicts are being murdered by a killer dubbed the Spider, and not everybody is disapproving.
The twin narratives follow the female journalist Arezoo (Amir-Ebrahimi) trying to investigate the story, and the married, devoted family man killer (Bajestani) who is calmly certain that this is God’s work (though he doesn’t want the neighbours to know about it.)
The performances are immaculate and it compellingly captures the grubby peripheries and hypocritical misogyny of Iranian society. It’s a fine film but I’d understand if you prefer to give it a miss.
Directed by Ali Abbasi. Starring Zar Amir-Ebrahimi, Mehdi Bajestani, Arash Ashtiani, Forouzan Jamshidnejad and Sina Parvaneh. Subtitled. Running time: 118 mins.
More Than Ever (15)
****
Helene (Krieps) is dying, and it has turned her into a right mopey old grump.
Rather than row the Atlantic for charity or start an inspiring but lighthearted podcast on the topic like any normal person faced with a terminal prognosis, she withdraws from social life, feels sorry for herself and starts a sneaky online relationship with a Norwegian man who is blogging about his cancer.
Eventually, Helene tells her devoted husband Matthieu (Ulliel) that she needs some space and heads off alone to the fjords.
Even though it is immaculately performed by its tiny cast, well written and has nice scenery, I can’t pretend this represents a good night out.
It does though have a clear-eyed and uncomfortable honesty about our ways of dealing with death that is deeply impressive. Its thesis is that there is a clear and unbridgeable divide between the dying and the living that no amount of love or sincerity can breach.
Atef’s film offers a total absence of sentimentality, but an abundance of emotion, which is a very fine ratio.
Directed by Emily Atef. Starring Vicky Krieps, Gaspard Ulliel and Bjørn Floberg. Subtitled. Running time:123 mins.
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