Holy Motors

The criticism I'm hearing most about "Holy Motors" is that it's about nothing. That it means nothing. That they - the unhappy viewer - needs more from their movies than random events strewn together without logic. As if the road to nowhere is not interesting in and of itself to them. It makes me wonder, why don't we expect our concept of narrative to be challenged more in the movies we consume? Why don't we put forth as much effort in confronting art, as the artist has put forth in confronting us?

"Holy Motors" is, to me, an act of filmic hypnosis. It made the cinema lover in me immediately and deeply happy from frame one (and not just because it references so much cinema of the past and critiques trends in the cinema of the present). I appreciate that film is not simply just another way of telling a story. Film is painting with light. It features human beings at play. It is design and photography and fashion and imagination. Of all the things cinema embraces... story is just a single element. So how did it become the MOST important element? Or, even more baffling to me, when did our idea of story itself become so tepid?

The story in "Holy Motors" is writ large. It scans like a modern myth. Like the oldest stories the human race tells. It features improbable and fantastical things happening along a journey. Its protagonist is a modern Ulysses trekking through the strange and fabled land of human experience, always searching for home. It is the only story ever told. And yet, again and again I hear people say that the movie has no narrative. No character they can connect to. No meaning.

Just because director Leos Carax is playful and tenuous with "meaning" doesn't mean it's not there. This is a film that is both about the drudgery and the exhilaration of creating for a living. It follows a day in the life of an artist. An artist always on the move. Sometimes that artist is tired, sometimes inspired, sometimes longing, sometimes exactly in the right place at the right time.

A friend I saw it with was bored. I still can't even understand how that's possible. Here's a movie in which anything can happen. In which any image can be juxtaposed with any other. In which the central architecture is not some obscuring three-act structure built out of a tired overplayed premise, but instead, is a careening litany of virtually every possible premise available. It readily teeters from overindulgent spectacle to tiny truth and back again as it explores, but never fusses over, the role of new technology in cinema, complications of identity, the strange job of acting for a living and so much more...

Most importantly though, the movie is about being on the job. The job of being human. Doing the work of being alive.

And we, the viewer, we work too. We work for meaning in the dark of the theater. We work to help fashion the story. To find the true character at the center of the experience. To understand where the human heart falls in all this flailing, anything-goes madness.

Life is work. Art is work. Observing is work. Isn't that beautiful?

"Cinema is a territory. It exists outside of movies. It's a place I live in. It's a way of seeing things, of experiencing life. But making films, that's supposed to be a profession." - Leos Carax

Holy Motors is like a more out-there version of the films of Charlie Kaufman. You should expect surreal surprises, and my advice would be to not read too much about it before watching it, so you can just let the film happen to you, like an art experience. Don't expect this story of a man (a fully committed Denis Lavant) taking on 9 different personas in a day in Paris to make any neat logical sense, this is a film of dreams and ideas - music, madness, death, sex, despair and comedy. It seems to be about questions around acting - what does it mean to be an actor? aren't we all playing the part of our own lives? what does performing a role cost us? how does a performance manage to move us so intensely? I saw this at the Sydney Film Festival with a large audience, and it was interesting listening to people's laughter. Sometimes that was in response to a comic scene, but at other times it seemed more that a startling idea or image left some people not knowing how else to respond (eg a very odd short scene near the end, as Denis ends his workday, caused some people to laugh, while I found it terribly moving). The delight is in the individual scenes, though some of the scenarios have a real sadness to them: the motion capture scene, where human movement proves spellbinding in a way that CGI can never be; the sad tale of the daughter returning home after a party; the wonderfully crazed and uncomfortable Eva Mendes segment (make sure you check out the writing on the gravestones); and the surprisingly dramatic scene featuring pop icon Kylie Minogue (whose other film appearances were never anything like this). The tone and quality isn't consistent the whole way through, which can feel like a flaw, but it also keeps you on your toes. You might find parts of it pretentious or difficult to interpret, but the next moment you may be moved and not know why. It will definitely make most of the films you've watched recently seem very very dull.

I suspect that viewers will either love or hate "Holy Motors," a surreal French drama that eventually falls victim to its own pretentiousness.

It tells the tale of an actor/quick-change artist who rides around Paris in a specially designed stretch-limo, donning various costumes and enacting bizarre movie-type scenes for paying customers. One moment he's a sewer-dwelling beast in search of a "beauty;" the next he's a hit man , then a female beggar, then a dying old man, even, at one point, a CGI effect come to life.

Written and directed by Leos Carax, the movie ultimately emerges as a cinematic Rorschach Test, open to whichever interpretation each member of the audience cares to get out of it. Is it about how we all eventually wind up donning masks and false identities as a means of escaping the crushing monotony of our daily lives? Or is it about how we use such masks to avoid showing ourselves and the world-at-large who we really are? Or is it a dissertation on the nature of art and the artist, or on the changing nature of movie making in an era in which the camera has become a ubiquitous part of everyday life, available to anyone and everyone at all times?

Who knows, and, frankly, who really cares? In terms of execution, Carax lacks the light hand and delicate touch of a Luis Bunuel from his late French period. "Holy Motors," on the other hand, is redundant and, at times, downright unpleasant, and much too impressed with its own cleverness to be of much interest to any but the most esoteric-minded of viewers. But the Paris locales are nice.

Holy Motors (2012)

A bizarre (and highly praised) film that is ambitious and inventive to the point of pain. I wish it was as brilliant as it intends. As we follow the leading character Oscar through a series of seemingly unconnected events, it struck me that the goal is simply to stage these odd moments, almost choreographed surreal adventures where he takes on different personae (with elaborate costumes). The events don't achieve what you might call depth or meaning. They are interesting—how could they fail on that score?—yet interesting turns out to be not enough.

Still, look for high style throughout, some terrific underworld insanity, some unfiltered sex and violence, and lots and lots of pretense. I have a feeling there are some people who might rate this among their favorite films and so I'd say give this a try. It might take half an hour to know whether the changing roles and scenes (and the self-indulgence) will keep you sustained.

Since Oscar is shuttled from one location to another in a stretch limo, you get the feeling he might just be a filthy rich eccentric who refuses to be bored with life. He admits he started doing this (every day, we get the sense) for "the beauty of the act," and this high level of aesthetic tension seems insufficient for the depravity involved.

This is a French-German enterprise, set in Paris. It has enough quiet moments to make you impatient, but from the pause it will take off on another romp. The actor has to be admired, for sure—Denis Levant, known for his boundary pushing roles (from Shakespeare to experimental film). The director, Leos Carax is likewise associated with the avant garde —and with Levant. But they have tried to keep their grand experiment traditionally cinematic, as well, so there are lots of ways to appreciate what's going on. The filming is sublime, the ambiance from lighting to set design is gorgeous.

There is that dangerous point in a art when a work gets so serious it demands of itself a kind of perfect to succeed. And there are so many little holes here, even some odd moments in the acting, it becomes almost laughable. At times. Which is too bad. There is a lot here to take quite seriously, I think. Then again, maybe it's meant to be an absurdist dark comedy all the way. Which means we're allow to laugh after all. Go for it.

Leos Carax comes back after a 13 year hiatus to present us with a beautifully weird, absurdist film, which is both 'a tribute to cinema' as well as 'an ode to film (celluloid)'. It doesn't have a linear story or much of a plot, and doesn't make much sense in its entirety. But there's something oddly delightful about it, and keeps you intrigued till the very end. It is unlike anything one has seen before. There are various film references in the movie which would keep cinephiles amazed.

Shakespeare says, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts." This movie is like a literal adaptation of that text; it follows an actor named Mr. Oscar, who dons one role after the other, in actual settings, in front of seemingly invisible cameras. It compares an actor's roles to real-life roles, and the themes tackled are similar too - love, sex, despair, death, etc. And in his journey, we also come across various genres of films.

What does it mean to be an actor? How is it costing one? Till what does one have to go to make it feel authentic? These are just few of the questions it makes us wonder. And other than the screenplay, it's the brilliant performance of talented actor Denis Lavant that makes us wonder that. All the sequences have something to offer; they move you, make you laugh, or make you think.

Few notable film references: - 'Mon Oncle' (the interior of first house) - 'Lovers on the Bridge' (Beggar sequence, La Samaritaine) - 'Mauvais Sang' (motion-capture sequence with red & white lines scrolling in the background) - 'Tokyo!' (the pseudo-leprechaun Merde; he also eats sushi before performing it) - monster movies like 'King Kong' and 'Godzilla' (Merde picking up the model; the original score from 'Godzilla') - 'Underground' (Accordion scene) - 'Breathless' (The name 'Jean', as in Jean Seberg, Kylie Minogue's hairstyle, the mention about lost baby, suicidal tendency) - 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg' (Kylie's singing sequence) - 'Cremaster 5' (Kylie's dive backwards from the building) - 'Max Mon Amour' (being married to monkey) - 'Eyes Without a Face' (the same actress, the same mask), which is both 'a tribute to cinema' as well as 'an ode to film (celluloid)'. It doesn't have a linear story or much of a plot, and doesn't make much sense in its entirety. But there's something oddly delightful about it, and keeps you intrigued till the very end. It is unlike anything one has seen before. There are various film references in the movie which would keep cinephiles amazed.