Damien Chazelle's three-hour bacchanal is messier than most big-budget films have the nerve to be. It never bores.
Yet for all the complications, this is a very simple narrative of how people go out of style in an industry that commodifies humanity. In fact, when Chazelle participates in that very commodification, it’s as crass as anything else in. Chazelle ostensibly has some half a dozen principal characters, but two of them—trumpeter Sidney Palmer and renaissance woman Lady Fay Zhu are barely present. Much of their interior or daily lives is passed over to focus on Nellie, Manny, and Jack.
, is overtly gesturing to diversity, and yet he keeps these marginalized identities on the margins. Oh well, better luck next time.’s main concern is razzle dazzle, but there’s insight here and there. Jean Smart plays a gossip columnist named Elinor St. John, who is a composite of many real-life people, including Adela Rogers St. Johns and Louella Parsons; she also retreads ground laid down by Judy Davis when she played Hedda Hopper in the Ryan Murphy series.
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