Babylon | Important Motifs

In this section of our Colossus Movie Guide for Babylon, we look at important motifs that help us understand the film. 

Cast

• Nellie LaRoy – Margot Robbie
• Jack Conrad – Brad Pitt
• Manny Torres – Diego Calva
• Lady Fay Zhu – Li Jun Li
• Sidney Palmer – Jovan Adepo
• Elinor St. John – Jean Smart
• George Munn – Lukas Haas
• Ruth Adler – Olivia Hamilton
• Max – P.J. Byrne
• Robert Roy – Eric Roberts
• James McKay – Tobey Maguire
• Don Wallach – Jeff Garlin
• The Count – Rory Scovel
• Otto Von Strassberger – Spike Jonze
• Written by – Damien Chazelle
• Directed by – Damien Chazelle

Important motifs in Babylon

The party

The opening party at Don Wallach’s mansion serves as an overall metaphor for Hollywood. The extravagance, decadence, grandeur, beauty, mayhem, absurdity, cruelty, and ugliness. It’s not a coincidence that Nellie’s arrival to the party and becoming the life of it foreshadows her arrival to Hollywood and immediate success. 

But Chazelle doesn’t rely on the singular party. Instead, we see several play out. Each with more chaos thrown in. With more negativity. These crescendo with the “who wants to fight a snake” party that almost ends Nellie’s life, then, finally, the high society party where Nellie has to, in order to fit in, dress like someone she’s not and talk like someone’s she’s not, until the pressure becomes too much and she self-destructs. 

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Every party foreshadows the next chapter in the lives of our main characters, sets the tone for what comes next, and embodies the relationship the characters have with Hollywood itself. It’s meaningful then, that, at the very end, when Manny has his out of body experience while watching Singin’ in the Rain, that Babylon brings us back to the opening party and uses it to kick off the whole “History of Movies” sequence. That party is, in Babylon, both the literal and figurative big bang, and comes to embody Hollywood as a whole. It’s the wildest party you’ve ever seen, in ways both transcendent and obliterating. 

What are your thoughts?

Are there more motifs you think should be part of the Colossus Movie Guide for Babylon? Leave your thoughts below and we’ll consider them for the guide.