Paul Schrader throws his torch in the fire of Babylon hot takes

Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is shaping up to be the most polarizing film of the holiday season, with some critics gushing over the silent-era epic as a “modern masterpiece” and others decrying it as an overstuffed, self-indulgent mess. But Master Gardener director Paul Schrader had a different problem with the film: its historical authenticity.

“BABYLON is many things but well researched isn’t one of them,” Schrader writes in a recent post on his well-loved Facebook account. “After reading a number of planted articles about the filmmakers’ voluminous ‘research ,’ I was scratching my head. Does any film historian agree the film’s putative historicity?”

Although Babylon does feature a variety of real figures from the period from Marion Davies to William Randolph Hearst, the project does take some liberties (for example, centering cocaine as Hollywood’s drug of choice when morphine would have been more accurate.) Speaking to IndieWire earlier this month, Chazelle said his research for the film was like “a little treasure trove” he returned to “many times” over the years.

“The research was so addictive that it took a conscious decision to finally go, ‘It’s now or never. This should be the movie I should try to make now,’” Chazelle shared. “So I have to close the book, look at these notes I’ve collected over the years, this dense mass of impenetrable stuff, and actually figure out what the roadmap through that would be.”

Whether Chazelle’s debaucherous roadmap tickled your fancy or not, one thing’s for sure: the film bombed at the box office. Babylon opened to just $3.6 million in theaters over Christmas Weekend, a mere fraction of the nearly $250 million it needs to make to break even. But, hey; at least we got a new and notable Jean Smart monologue out of it all, right?