The montage at the end of Babylon is confusing and viewers may wonder what director Damien Chazelle’s intentions are. In the final scene of Babylon, Manny is emotional and awestruck during a screening of Singin’ in the Rain. Suddenly, the images from the classic musical transform into a fast-paced montage of renowned films spanning from the beginning of cinema to the present day, from Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou to James Cameron’s Avatar. Justin Hurwitz’s galvanizing score packs this audacious and experimental ending with a walloping punch that stuns viewers. But what does it mean?
Throughout Babylon, we follow Manny’s descent into the underworld of show business with overdosing starlets and strange, voyeuristic sideshows. The film reveals that Hollywood has a seedy underbelly and is a breeding ground for abuse and violence. Babylon also highlights the banal, repetitive, and sometimes dangerous nature of making movies. In one sequence, Nellie struggles over and over and over again to hit her mark and say the correct lines. The crew grows increasingly frustrated, and the sound man dies from overheating in the booth. Here Chazelle exposes how filmmaking is not always romantic: it can be grueling.
But Babylon is not entirely cynical. One of the most powerful quotes from the film reflects how Chazelle also feels about the movie industry. A journalist tells Brad Pitt’s character, Jack Conrad—a silent actor afraid that his stardom is waning—that “in a hundred years when you and I are long gone, anytime someone threads a frame of yours through a sprocket, you’ll be alive again . . . A child born in 50 years will stumble across your image flickering on a screen and feel he knows you, like a friend, even though you breathed your last before he breathed his first. You’ve been given a gift. Be grateful. You’ll spend eternity with angels and ghosts.”
In the final montage, Chazelle celebrates such images that will live on in history. The ending of Babylon marvels at the technological progress that the film industry has made. New changes will continue to captivate audiences for decades to come. All the difficult work that goes into creating a film, and even the insidious parts of the business, result in a finished product that will resonate with people for eternity. Through this abstract, grandiose ending, Chazelle asks viewers if they can reconcile these paradoxical ideas that movies and the people who make them are both magical and problematic.