Holy Motors Review

Holy Motors is a wacky pastiche of black comedy, musical, satire, and drama, a melting pot in which Leos Carax dumps the history of cinema.  Don’t label it an experimental film; the stigma of such a title would undoubtedly detract from its appeal.  Carax makes no move to explain what’s actually happening, but that didn’t prevent me from naturally settling into the film’s groove.

            The film opens with a movie screening, but we only see the audience staring back.  I found myself pondering the absurd moment: two audiences staring at one another.  One is on the screen, and one exists in this tangible world with me.  The shot sets up the rest of the film and reminds us that we are watching a movie. 

Carax then cuts to the meat of the film.  Denis Lavant plays Monsieur Oscar (which may or may not be an Academy Award reference), who spends the majority of the film in his limousine.  Over the course of a day, Oscar must see to several appointments, each of which requires him to change his character.  He applies makeup, changes his wardrobe, and acts out a different role.  At one point, Oscar is an elderly woman with a cane walking down a road.  He becomes a crazy Leprechaun that runs wildly through a cemetery.  He’s a dying man, a sentimental lover, and a hit man.

Oscar is an actor, and these appointments are the roles he must perform for his occupation.  We only see Oscar’s director once, but for the rest of the film, we watch Oscar as he grows weary from his always-changing, theatrical persona. 

Arguably, the turning point of the film occurs as Oscar, in his crazy Leprechaun garb, stumbles upon an American photo shoot (with Eva Mendes, of course).  The photographer repeats the word “beauty” while snapping shots of Mendes.  Once Oscar bites the fingers off an intern and continues his rampage, the photographer’s mantra changes to “weird.”  He chases Oscar while repeating the word, even more fascinated by his subject than by the statuesque Mendes.  It seems Carax is laughing at the critics who will undoubtedly love his film because of its weirdness.  Mendes is beautiful, sure, but nothing gets a critic hot and bothered like the uncanny.

Keep in mind that Holy Motors is not weird for the sake of being weird.  The film is unlike a lot of movies being made right now, but it’s not off-putting because of its weird qualities.  Rather, it operates as an ode to cinema itself, and Carax punctuates this point with his many allusions to film history.  Two musical themes from Godzilla are heard as Oscar continues his romp through the cemetery, and even the deathbed scene visually echoes Keir Dullea in his role as the dying David Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

Paralleled with these allusions are the absurd high points of the film.  A character randomly bursts into song.  A gravestone reads “Visit My Website.”  Oh, and Carax throws in a brief entr’acte in the film’s middle, which again calls attention to his obsession with theatrics.  This is no typical incidental music.  Carax’s entr’acte shows Oscar and company walking through a chapel while playing some sort of rollicking prog-jam on accordions.  It is completely over-the-top, and the song itself had me cheering.  Accordions should never rock this hard, but like everything Carax puts in the film, he pulls it off.

At the film’s end, Oscar goes home, but the home we see is a house populated with chimpanzees.  You can argue that it’s the only fitting ending to such an absurd piece of art, yet his going home is just another appointment.  Oscar never really “goes home.”  He never escapes from this routine of changing faces and of living a life that is not his own. 

            When his driver, Celine, parks her limousine at the Holy Motors garage, she picks up a phone, shakes loose her hair, puts on a white mask, and makes a call.  “I’m coming home,” she says.  Now, we don’t see her final destination, but it appears that Celine is the only one going home in this film.  Though, even she must wear a mask to reach some “real” destination.  The answer to this strange question of what living in reality means as an actor might be found in a discussion on cameras that occurs previously in the film.  Oscar mentions the camera’s increasing smallness; cameras are now so small that they’re practically invisible.  Anyone could be filmed at any given time, and though no cameras are present as Oscar takes on his several roles, I can’t help but feel that he’s been making movies the entire time. 

            So yes, Holy Motors is absurd and blurs the line between art and life.  I have to ask though: if life is absurd, then why can’t art be?  The absurdity should not sway you from seeing the film.  It’s a strange trip, and Carax wants to take you with him while also illustrating the stranger points of art and reality.