Given how many motion pictures are released each year, it’s inevitable that the vast majority fade into relative obscurity. There’s only so much room in the mainstream, and that space is almost always occupied by the most accessible and widely-advertised of movies. In this column, I seek to discuss those movies which have been overlooked or underestimated and attempt to explain why they’re worth your attention. Ultimately, I hope to introduce lesser-known films to people who might never have heard about them, and if I’m really lucky, maybe I’ll help broaden my readers’ horizon.
Did I like it?
Yes, very much.
What’s it about?
Holy Motors is about a man named Oscar who travels around Paris to various so-called “appointments.” In each appointment, he dons a new costume and pretends to be someone else. He’s clearly some sort of actor, but the nature of his performances is never entirely clear: is he being filmed? Are all the people he meets actors as well? Who has set up these appointments? What we do know is that a woman named Céline chauffeurs him between appointments in a limousine, and that he’s been acting for some time now. Everything else is deprived of almost all context, aside from the occasional ambiguous clue.
Who made it?
The film was written and directed by French filmmaker Leos Carax, who had previously attracted some attention for films like 1986’s Mauvais Sang and 1999’s The Lovers on the Bridge. Holy Motors is, by a wide margin, Carax’s most well-known film in North America, and competed for the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Oscar is played by French actor Denis Lavant, known for films like Claire Denis’ 1999 drama Beau Travail, and Céline is played by Édith Schob, who is best known for her role in the classic horror film Eyes Without a Face, and more recently for films like Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours (2008).
What language is it in?
French.
What’s its style?
Holy Motors is a genre-bending surreal drama which unites a variety of disconnected scenes through the framing device of Oscar applying makeup and driving between appointments. Each sequence could qualify as a short film in its own right, but combined they make for a genuinely unpredictable experience. The film frequently offers up truly bizarre images and stories, but it retains a measured pace throughout, and transitions smoothly between disparate tones: in one scene it’s gross and absurd, and then in the very next it’s suddenly quiet and serious.
Why is it interesting?
For one, because it’s really weird. Because of its shapeshifting quality, with the protagonist constantly adopting new identities, the film has a lot of space to explore strange, semi-experimental avenues, ranging from semi-conventional drama to creepy motion-capture sessions to sudden musical numbers. Several sequences are truly inexplicable, and while it’s possible that most of them are references to other movies, the film commits to every single outré conceit it digs up to the extent that it never seems trite or cynical. Carax’s touch is consistently precise and enigmatic, and the film’s best sequences offer multiple surprising paradigm shifts without even changing Oscar’s costume. Even the scenes where Oscar is out of costume seem to exist outside of our reality, and the film appears to take place in a near-future sci-fi universe which is never properly explained. It’s a glorious collage of inventive moments, and its greatest pleasures come from just how inspired its various bizarre parts are.
Carax himself has stated in an interview that Holy Motors is made up of ideas for other movies which he never made, and indeed, the film often feels like it’s comprised entirely of the best scenes from unreleased underground films. If the movie partially a self-reflexive paean to beauty of performance, it backs that theme up with scenes of astonishing grace, especially at its most grotesque. Lavant’s performance – or rather, his performances, as he switches styles every time the movie begins a new digression – are terrific, evoking the physicality of the most energetic sequences as well as the pathos of the quieter ones. But a lot of it is also simply from the motion on-screen, which regularly achieves a sort of surreal poetry even at its ugliest and creepiest.
Underpinning all of this is are distinct melancholic undertones, which forge the film’s primary narrative arc: as the day goes on, Oscar grows increasingly weary, and his behaviour suggests someone who the world has passed by. Because so little is learned about him, it’s tempting to read into details of his performances, and at times the things he says in character resonate backwards. Again, we never learn the exact nature of the job, and it’s not even clear whether he’s improvising or has memorized a script. That ambiguity does service clear themes, but it also presents Holy Motors as open to interpretation. It can be enjoyed for its stylistic idiosyncrasy alone, but it’s also filled with slivers of meaning which lend those bursts of madness genuine emotional power.
What are its themes?
Holy Motors is deliberately opaque, but it has a general veneer of existentialism which invites the audience to project their own emotions onto the performers’ tired faces. There are a few points which are underlined, however. Most profound is the passage of time: the film makes frequent references to subjects like fatigue, illness, nostalgia, separation, reunion, and especially the progress of technology. Yet more obviously, it’s about cinema, and as it progresses it’s increasingly clear that Carax might be heralding the medium’s demise. Again, it’s all just vague enough to invite multiple readings, but what stands out is the signs of obsolescence, of something which was once treasured but has now been replaced.
Perhaps more divisively, it’s also a film about itself – that is, more than just a film about cinema, it’s a film about acting. One of the strongest emotional lines serves as an explanation of Carax’s own inspirations, and it paints all of these bizarre and seemingly disparate episodes in a unique light. Holy Motors begs for a second viewing with that explanation in mind, and it’s best approached not only to find that meaning, but also to simply appreciate its frequently-demented creativity. In one sense, the film is about the digital evolution of cinema, and in another, it’s about growing old and tired as the world passes you by. Most of all, though, it’s just about the sheer beauty of performance, and deserves to be taken in for the full brunt of its wonderous insanity.
In summary:
Holy Motors is a genuinely bizarre series of loosely connected sequences which stands out not only for its sheer craziness but also for its perverse beauty and its melancholy undertones. It’s an unusual and admittedly challenging experience, but for that exact reason it’s singularly unforgettable.
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