Holy Motors

It's going to be difficult to keep this short.

One of the darlings of the 2012 festival circuit, Leos Carax's Holy Motors delivers a pure cinematic experience designed to confront and challenge our understanding of the art form at every level. At the risk of over-simplifying a film that is anything but simple, Holy Motors is a film about the cinema as it stands today, and the deft ways in which Carax explores various aspects of his subject, whether addressing film- makers themselves, we the audience, or even the debate over physical versus digital media, are so rich and dense that it is impossible to absorb it all after a single viewing. As such it is sure to alienate and infuriate perhaps the majority of viewers, yet those who find themselves swept up in the abstract beauty of it all are in for an inspiring, enlightening, and at times overwhelming two hours.

Holy Motors follows a day in the life of Monsieur Oscar (a mind-boggling Denis Lavant), an actor whose roles seem to take place out in the real world rather than on the stage or screen. As Oscar is ferried from one assignment to the next by his faithful limousine driver Céline (Edith Scob), so too does writer-director Carax transport us to his next discussion point. Each surreal vignette is presented without much in the way of explanation, and Carax refuses to hold the hand of the audience, instead offering viewers the chance to piece the film together themselves. Similarly, Lavant's remarkable performance can turn without warning, shifting the entire film's tone from tragic to comical at a moment's notice, further disorienting the audience. While some of Oscar's 'roles' have illuminating punchlines to ease our understanding, the majority are much more conceptual, and will demand repeat viewings to unpack before Carax's intentions for the piece as a whole will become clear, if they ever will.

In a year where chatter surrounding huge tent-pole releases is choking social media and online communities, Holy Motors is the film that most deserves to be discussed, and debates about the film amongst cinéastes are likely already in full swing. While the audience who will really connect with the film is going to be comparatively small, nothing has offered this much to chew on for some time, and its value to those who appreciate it will only increase over time. Holy Motors cannot really be approached effectively in a brief review such as this, as it's not exactly an easy film to recommend or not given that each individual could potentially take something different from seeing it. But for those seeking a respite from the mindlessness of blockbuster season, seeing Holy Motors is a no-brainer. Carax almost forces the audience into an intellectual tug-of-war without ever feeling like he is talking down to us, rather that he wants us to reconsider the world of cinema, and not least of all our own place in it.

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The first thing to do with this film is to dump the memory of the gushing but rather non-specific praise from critics, the perfect 10 out of 10 scores and the banner "film of the year", because having all of that on the head of the film will really not help it or you. I say this because although it was for critics, the casual viewer will certainly not make this film of the year in the traditional sense, because it is very much an experience. People have said that it is a film that you love or hate (as can be seen in the extreme gushing or spitting in some comments) but for me it is both and neither at once.

The plot (although it is also worth putting that notion out of your head too) is that a man is transported around in a limousine in Paris, being dropped off at different locations to fulfill a series of appointments. If you can get over the ridiculous sight of traffic moving freely in Paris, you will still need to work with the fact that these appointments range from acting like a tramp in the middle of busy street, acting out a weird alien love scene in a mo-cap suit, killing someone and taking their identity, being a frustrated father to a teenage girl and other such random things. These events range hugely in what they did to me. Between different episodes and indeed within different episodes I went from amusement to bemusement; from engaged to bored; from interested to frustrated – and for all of these I also went back the other way in some cases. It is a film that is frustrating and quite good at the same time. It is a total art film and it really has no interest in anyone who expects it to do anything to help the viewer. Personally I dislike this approach although I recognize that some love difference and uniqueness for just those qualities – it working or being good is a distant second.

I really tried to find the meaning in the film but it was too obscured for me and I was too remote for it to get to me. I have read quite a few reviews from those that love the film but they have been generally vague and non-specific in their praise, almost as if they really want to love it for how diverse and unique it is, but aren't able to put their finger on its good qualities despite this. This is not to say that I did not appreciate these qualities as well – just that for me they are not enough. So yes I quite enjoyed creative aspects to it, or some of the events and situations, but generally it just seemed too fragmented, too lacking in anything tangible and ultimately it just felt like it was being difficult and surreal for the sake of it, not as the path to a goal. I'm sure some were thrilled watching the character stand shaking a tin at passing strangers, or exhilarated by two people in mo-cap suits dry humping each other, or entertained by the sight of a silent Eva Mendes abducted by a naked crazy guy with an erection but such things did not work for me. There is something in there I am sure about cinema as we do get reference to cameras and other films, but as I say, it was too little, too obscured for me.

Visually the film has imagination and style, while the performance of Lavant is enthusiastic and committed, but these are not the content. I'm sure Mendes and Minogue both get a little career benefit from being on the inside of such a project, but for Mendes it was a waste although Minogue's section was nicely done. This is not a film for performances though and, outside of Lavant, there really isn't much to talk about. If you enjoy wildly weird and odd films on the basis that they are weird and odd, then you'll like this and will maybe even pat yourself on the back for being clever enough to enjoy it (even if you struggle to put that enjoyment into specific words). However those looking for more will be disappointed and many may hate the film; personally I found aspects to like and much to engage, but ultimately it didn't work for me as a whole and too much worked against it at the same time.

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.

A bizarre, enigmatic and brave cinematic return to feature film making from Leos Carax, after a 13 year gap, Holy Motors is a self-consciously low budget odyssey of ambiguous, pseudo-linear intentions. After five years attempting to raise funds for a large budget English language film that ultimately fell through, Carax turned his attentions on a native language film with a smaller cost, and was inspired when observing the many limousines driving around Paris. Regular collaborator Denis Lavant plays the mysterious Monsiuer Oscar, who is driven around the city in the white stretched vehicle, taking him to the variety of "appointments" of the day. The appointments appear to be a series of acting jobs, where Mr Oscar dresses up for the multitude of roles.

From a dishevelled gypsy woman, - through a banker, and a dying millionaire - to a crazed vagabond who kidnaps a fashion model, Kay M. (Eva Mendes), Oscar glides through the day and into the night, changing his appearance with make-up and prosthetics, fulfilling his duty to a mysterious company, accomplishing the jobs he is given information through files in the back of the car. In other scenarios Oscar is dressed in a black leotard with white dots, as he enters a very industrialised building where he performs a motion-capture dance and highly sexualised duo with a red-clad blond woman, as it turns into the serpentine CGI creation; in another, Oscar joins his 2 point 4 family unit, which consist of chimpanzees.

Whilst Carax takes many stylistic references from David Lynch, the film also offers a quite unique sense of humour. In one scene, Oscar is playing a dying rich man, who has his step-niece beside him in his last moments. After dying, Oscar climbs from the bed, the niece still sobbing into the covers, he turns back to ask the girls name, and offering apologies for his swift exit: "I have to get to another appointment" he states, which is returned with the reply that she also needs to leave for another appointment (It's funnier on screen than in writing - and certainly after the incredibly moving moments of death). It's a jarring punch-line to a heartfelt moment. Small details of technological modernity invade the mis-en-scene, for example, when Oscar is the vagabond, he wildly runs through a cemetery eating flowers, each gravestone has its own www.address.

Holy Motors is without question a film about film, and film making, offering allusions to Jean Cocteau and Jean-Luc Godard. Fundamentally though, this film seems to evoke another French original, Georges Franju, whose film Eyes Without a Face (1960) is highly referenced. Edith Scob (who played the masked victim in the film), drives Mr Oscar around, and actually reprises her role, and hides her face once again under the mask. The mysterious events in the film could also be regarded as a comment on changing nature of cinematic production. From the motion capture sequence to the nature of Oscar scatological "job", the film seems to lament the loss of real cinema - Carax filmed in digital video (a format that he hates) for budgetary reasons.

What is so beautiful about this mode of cinema is the complexity of meaning. This is film so dense in symbolism that it requires repeat viewings. Whether it's about the changing face of cinema, the acting profession, or an exploration of the nature of identity (Oscar could represent the many faces that we have to put on each day, in the performance of life, and our increasing need to compartmentalise each element of our lives), it doesn't really matter what the directors true intentions were. This is cinematic experience at a most cerebral level. We are not given the meaning, but we take from it what we bring to it, and can interpret it how we want. Lavant creates a fantastic, multi- faceted performance, even managing to hold an erect penis in the most unsexy environment ever. Kylie Minogue even manges to be perfectly suited for her small role in which she may have been a past lover of Mr Oscar, she also sings a song written by Carax and Neil Hannon, which enlightens a dingy musical movie moment.

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