SOURCE OF IMAGE (FILM STILL) “HOLY MOTORS” DIRECTED BY LEOS CARAX: https://mubi.com/films/holy-motors

So cinema screening 2.      Movie, Holy Motors.        My mind, blown. 

I came into this movie with no expectations, honestly I had never heard of the film before so I literally knew nothing, and the whole story (If i can even call it that) was beyond bizarre. I have complete mixed emotions about this movie, on one hand it was ridiculously nonsensical and weird and on the other hand it was inquisitively wonderful. Why? well every part of the movie was unexpected, every time I thought I knew what was happening, where the plot was going, the rug got completely pulled out from under me.

Holy Motors a fantasy, drama film (2012) written and directed by Leos Carax. is about the protagonist Mr Oscar commuting in a limo around Paris portraying numerous different characters lives, as for the rest of the storyline well Im not really too sure…

During the screening ideas flashed through my head, is he mentally ill? is this his job? is he schizophrenic? are they real monkeys? Is his daughter his actual daughter? Is everyone surrounded by Mr Oscar in on the act? Is everyone acting? how did he survive getting stabbed in the neck?

My favourite part of the movie was for sure the opening, where for a few a minute of so we stared out to a bunch of people watching a film, there faces were dark but you could just make out their silhouettes. They were still and silent and this gave a very eerie and white strange feeling. As we as an audience were sitting in the same environment i felt as if i was looking back on ourselves. This opening scene grabbed me immediately, I felt undeniably uncomfortable but also extremely mesmerised by it.

Despite it being extraordinarily frustrating that I never really understood what was happening at any point during the movie, I also found this feeling very interesting. It allowed me to really use my imagination to make up possible plots and ideas, the movie was straight forward, in comparison to Wizard of Oz where your expectations are met and the storyline follows a basic rhythm often with a book ending as opposed to Holy Motors which is completely confusing, non linear and ambiguous with a very open ending.

No matter how much I go over this movie in my head I’m still confused, and its not just me everyone next to me were making commentary throughout the film, if I had a dollar for every time I heard “what?” “I don’t get it?” “this is so weird” “do you get it?” I would indeed be very rich. yet,  the questions didn’t stop there, we spoke about it at lunch, on the train, in our group messenger and even in class the next day recommending others to watch this weirdly wonderful film.

So perhaps this is the point, to be so absurd and so beyond the norm, ensuring that most scenes make no conventional narrative sense. So that way viewers have to use there own imagination to fit the pieces together. Perhaps Carax didn’t even have any meaning behind this film, perhaps all he wanted was to confuse audiences so much so that they keep watching it and thinking about it to try and gather some sort of logical meaning.