Does Damien Chazelle like the movies? His big splash, La La Land, told the story of a gal who gives up true love with a true artist (a jazz man, as it happens) to pursue stardom, because c’mon, it’s stardom. (Come to think of it, it’s all there in the first line of the song that opens the show, in which a girl sings about leaving her own true love for the lights of LA.) A sad story, but still sweet and wistful and fun to look at. Here? We open with shit (from an elephant on its way to an Early Hollywood orgy) and follow with piss (from a Champagne-swilling ingénue at said orgy) before moving onto ersatz semen (from a bazooka-sized member wielded by a performing dwarf) getting sprayed all over the riotous crowd. Projectile vomiting is held in reserve until the film’s middle, but still: the magic of the movies, people. A party like this attracts a certain sort of someone: in this case, Nellie (Margot Robbie), the daughter of a con man and a crazy woman, on the run from home and bound for cinematic glory. Within minutes of her arrival, she’s hoovering up cocaine and listening to errand boy Manny (Diego Calva) yammer on about how movies are meaningful, bigger than life. Maybe so, maybe not, but the industry that produces them turns out to be, surprise surprise, a money-making machine that runs on people — emphasis on machine. The coming of sound is the big technical advance here — the torture of Nellie under the sound man’s tyranny gets especial and excruciating attention — but as the crazypants closing montage makes it clear, technology is god in Babylon, and the artist onscreen is at best a handmaiden, at worst a sacrificial victim. (One guess as to which sort of artist is the only one to make it out with his dignity intact.) What comes before that montage is long and frequently unpleasant, but at least there’s a point to all that decadence and despair: first time as tragedy, second time as hit musical. Of course, there are consolations along the way — Chazelle knows his business, after all. Casting Brad Pitt as a big shot on the wane is both bold and engaging. And a visit to the “asshole of LA” doubles nicely (and nastily) as a journey into moviedom’s carney roots. But for all the parties and pretty people, it’s not a fun ride. (2022) — Matthew Lickona