Film

Babylon

Other titles called Babylon: the 1980 film.

Damien Chazelle's three-hour fever dream of Old Hollywood's final silent era: ambition, cocaine, and the death of empires. It's visually stunning, narratively messy, occasionally hilarious, and punishing in the best way. For anyone who loved *The Wolf of Wall Street* or wants to see how far a director will go.

TMDb rating3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love the giddy, sprawling mess of a movie that bets everything on a single wild sequence and wants you to feel the vertigo of early Hollywood at full volume.

Skip it if you tire of excess for its own sake or want a tight story, since its lurches between bawdy comedy and grim sobriety can feel like whiplash.

What it asks of you: Expect over three hours that sprawl and shout through long party sequences, then lurch into quieter, sadder passages, so it asks for patience and a tolerance for chaos.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Wolf of Wall Street2013

Scorsese's descent into excess mirrors Babylon's structure: charismatic rise, moral freefall, visual dazzle. DiCaprio and Robbie have that same intoxicating chemistry, and the film never looks away from the ugliness beneath the glamour.

But It's three hours of wealthy people behaving terribly. If you found it repellent rather than compulsive, Babylon will feel like the same punishment.

The Wolf of Wall Street poster

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood2019

Tarantino's love letter to Old Hollywood captures that same wistful nostalgia for a vanished era, but with gentleness instead of Babylon's cruelty. DiCaprio in a similar liminal space, clinging to relevance as the world shifts around him.

But It moves in Tarantino's leisurely rhythm; nothing like Babylon's manic energy. If you want plot momentum, you'll find it frustratingly digressive.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood poster

Singin' in the Rain1952

The flip side of Babylon: Hollywood's transition from silent to sound told as pure joy. Same era, same upheaval, but where Babylon sees decay and desperation, this sees reinvention and grace. Essential context.

But It's a musical. If that word makes you wince, the color-coded charm might feel like saccharine nostalgia rather than insight.

Singin' in the Rain poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Babylon

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Sinister2012

Both are films about the ethics of witnessing. Babylon watches characters degrade and destroy themselves; Sinister watches the audience squirm at degradation and asks why we're complicit.

A formal experiment in horror about image and spectatorship. Like Babylon, it asks what we're willing to watch, what corrupts us through looking. The visual language is jagged and assaultive, same as Chazelle's approach.

But It's a genuine horror film with jump scares and dread. Babylon's tragedy is operatic; this is nightmare logic, which will feel like tonal whiplash.

Sinister poster
More like this (8)

The Godfather Part II1974

Coppola's parallel narrative structure—two eras, same moral rot—influenced Babylon's DNA. It shows how to weave multiple characters into a grand thematic statement without losing emotional weight.

But It's nearly four hours of men making terrible choices. The pacing is deliberate and grave; Babylon's frenzy this is not.

The Godfather Part II poster

A Star Is Born2018

Bradley Cooper's reinvention of the Hollywood cautionary tale captures the hunger and heartbreak at Babylon's core. It's smaller, more focused, but wrestles with identical questions about price and sacrifice.

But It's much more earnest. If you want your darkness cut with comedy and cocaine-fueled absurdity, this will feel thin.

A Star Is Born poster

Network1976

Paddy Chayefsky's savage satire of an industry eating itself alive has Babylon's scathing wit. It's shorter, sharper, and the contempt it feels for its subjects is dressed up as dark comedy throughout.

But It's from the '70s and deeply of that moment. The dated production design might read as quaint rather than illuminating.

Network poster

The Artist2011

Silent film shot in black and white about the death of silent cinema—the mirror image of Babylon's thesis. It's tender where Babylon is brutal, which gives it surprising power as a counterargument.

But It's genuinely quiet and melancholic. You're not getting spectacle or laughs; it's a elegiac, almost funereal meditation.

The Artist poster

Sunset Boulevard1950

The template for all Hollywood gothic tales. Gloria Swanson's faded silent star is Babylon's spiritual ancestor. Wilder's cynicism and craft remain untouched; it's everything Chazelle was reaching for.

But It's austere and slow by modern standards. The narrative is a slow-motion car crash, which some will find meditative and others will find glacial.

Sunset Boulevard poster

The Red Shoes1948

Powell and Pressburger's baroque tragedy about art consuming the artist has Babylon's visual excess and moral despair. It's about obsession, beauty, and the cost of creation, in stunning Technicolor.

But It's a ballet film. If you can't find the story in movement and design, the narrative will feel gossamer-thin.

The Red Shoes poster

A Prophet2009

Both structure themselves as the rise and fall of a character who cannot help but self-destruct. The machinery of ambition is identical; only the setting changes. Both love their protagonists while despising them.

Jacques Audiard's masterpiece about rise and fall, power and corruption, shot with the same kinetic energy Chazelle brings. It's a microcosm of empire-building in a prison cell. Completely gripping, completely moral.

But It's French, subtitled, set in prison, and extremely violent. Also nearly two and a half hours of unrelenting tension. Not entertainment—an ordeal, but a necessary one.

A Prophet poster

Contempt1963

Both are metacinematic: films about films and the people who make them, about how commerce poisons creation. Where Babylon is American spectacle collapsing under its own weight, Contempt is European art watching itself become a commodity.

Godard's film about filmmaking, marriage, and the corruption of art by commerce. Shot in VistaVision, it's visually sumptuous while being glacially cold—the inverse of Babylon's manic excess, but asking identical questions about authenticity and sellout.

But It's a Godard film from 1963. It moves at a philosophical pace, entire sequences are conversations, and it has no interest in plot momentum or conventional drama. Babylon's speed will have prepared you poorly.

Contempt poster

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