Holy Motors was 100x more strange & confusing than I imagined it would be, even after Professor Zinman’s cautionary introduction of the film. I can genuinely recall at least a dozen times where I out loud said to myself while watching “what the heck is going on”; & honestly, I still don’t know. Maybe that’s why I found the film so entertaining to watch – because I was so utterly lost the entire time that all I could do was laugh. I’m guessing that wasn’t everyone else’s first impression, which is valid since there was obviously a lot of violent & strangely dark stuff occurring throughout the movie as well, but around half way through the movie I accepted that it wouldn’t make any sense to me, so I just decided to laugh through the confusion. In honor of that, instead of attempting to do a probably unsuccessful analysis of what Carax was trying to say with this film, I thought it would be more enjoyable to reflect on some of my favorite funny (kind of) moments of Holy Motors that I had from our viewing.
This scene for me definitely set the stage for the rest of the weirdness that I was about to witness in this movie. I was quite uncomfortable watching the other parts of this scene, but when the animation came on I just lost it. This was my first memorable “what the heck is happening?” & laugh it off, because still thinking back to it, what the heck was I watching.
This scene was actually funny; certainly strange, but funny. Other parts got a quick laugh out of me, but Monsieur Oscar eating the flowers & then eating the girls fingers was so uncalled for that I was laughing the entire time. Was the girls fingers getting eaten funny? No. But the randomness of it? Absolutely. I’ve got to hand it to Carax because this was by far one of the oddest scenes that I’ve ever seen but I loved it.
Like any typical movie, what do we do after a long hour & a half of fake killing people & slowly dying? Break out into singing of course! Just when I felt like I had a grip on what kind of movie this was, I get caught off guard by a musical number. I definitely didn’t hate it, but just another “where did this come from” with a laugh.
I felt like this was a fabulous ending to the movie & it definitely helped me put into perspective what message that Carax was trying to convey, but talking cars was far from how I imagined he would do it. Very clever, & it got a chuckle out of me too – 10/10, no notes.
My biggest question throughout the duration of the whole film was how were we supposed to differentiate between what was real or not? Or was any of it real? Specifically in the scene with his daughter in the car, it felt real & I thought that it was him outside of his work life, but who actually knows because there weren’t any cameras to be seen to help me figure out what was acting & what wasn’t.
When watching this film, the only question circling through my mind consistently was – “What is going on right now.” Before the film we were all prepped with the notion that you may leave this film having absolutely no clue what the point of it was, instead of taking that as a suggestion I took it as a challenge. Throughout the screening I consistently wrote in my notes what I thought it was about and where it could possibly be going and every time I did that, the next scene would be something I would have never expected. This feeling of shock after feeling like I was getting a grip on what was going on stood out to me the most when he was dressed as a leprechaun and then genuinely bit that woman’s finger off. I was appalled and totally confused.
After the screening, I walked back to my dorm in the cold and I still was trying to wrap my head around what I just saw. I came to 3 conclusions. The only consistent thing in that movie was his emotions in the car. We saw this through the moments where he was taking off his masks and clothes and he would smoke a cigarette or just simply look pretty aimless. It was clear that he was simply a prop. At the beginning of this screening I remember hearing that this was a movie about an actor, post screening I thought that this was a film that tried to encompass the emotions performers feel as the characters they portray consume their lives. Because if you think about it, how many times have you watched a movie with an actor and simply started to refer to that actor as the character they played. Even though the filming is “over” they cannot escape the role, which probably leads to identity issues like he faced within the car and spells of depression.
My next conclusion was that he was able to play these roles by murdering these people who looked like him and taking their spots but the death of one of his roles comes from framing the dead character he is taking to look like how he looked before. That became clear to me after we watched him kill the guy and started framing him to look like how he looked currently. That was trippy. In that moment I felt like I was watching someone try to explain phases of emotions and life. When someone is “reborn”, which is a common phrase nowadays as people seek restarting more and more, what does that entail? Does it mean completely killing that version of yourself and beginning to be someone new? Thats the question that swirled through my head while watching him lie next to himself while bleeding out.
My final conclusion was that this was a commentary on beauty standards and unrealistic expectations. While watching the VERY weird scene with the leprechaun and then finally seeing the dedication at the end, it was like a lightbulb went off in my head. Every character that he played was distinctly different, some were crazy, some were completely normal, and some were old rich men and gangsters, he put himself in every “shoe” possible; while still at his core being the same guy. When I saw the scene of him smoking a cigarette with this model and her taking off her wig and letting her hair out while being literally underground, it made me think that this movie was about who we would be if nobody knew who we were? We technically would be free to be whoever we wanted, we could be deranged or rich or an accordion player, because nobody would be there to police us or critique us on how we live our lives. As he covered the model in a traditional burqa I thought, “now this is insane, because he saw her a bit nude he decided she would look best fully covered? ” Unfortunately upon further thinking I believe I missed the mark initially. I believe this scene was about expectation and recognizing the comfort in not having to worry about how you look since you are covered, something that directly contrasted her entire livelihood as a model. When he laid next to her nude and she sang to him, I thought it was a continuation of the “search for a perfect photo” with both of them that was previously brought up as the photographer tried to pull him from the crowd. Two very different people, however at the core, not very different at all. Both are covered, one by a burqa and one by an absolutely fake persona. Both underground, both vulnerable, and two people who (based off how quickly she took off her wig) don’t feel like themselves during their jobs.
Based on my conclusions and the dedication, I feel a bit qualified to take a shot at what I believe this movie is about. Though I believe it does touch on multiple things, I think it was about how one can find comfort in not having any harsh expectations set for them, and in turn who we become when we are being watched vs we feel like we aren’t being watched at all. We hear this when Mr.Oscar expresses disinterest in his job because he feels like the cameras are “too small”, how they used to be bigger than our heads, but now they are so small we can’t even see them anymore. I believe this was also a comment about being watched/ judged, I think his company wasn’t for movies- I think it was to create spectacle for people so they could have something to film and post. I think the “too small cameras” are eyes. A part of me thinks he is also being exploited. Which could be another theme of this movie(actor exploitation) since he talks about how he once acted and is met with a lack of interest. Confirming that the world now is his “stage” meaning he is performing all the time. Many actors face this as they get bombarded by paparazzi just going on walks. He faces an extreme lack of comfort, based on the movie we never see him stop. We saw him only really relax when he was underground with the model, in bed playing an old dying man, and when he was inside the car. Whenever he came out the car, peopled filmed what he did, stared at him, or left with a story to tell. So to conclude, even though I could talk about this longer, I believe this was a critique on what we as people do when we are being viewed, it also implores you to think about who you would be if nobody saw you at all.
Holy Motors is a film that takes the concept of perception and viewing yourself from someone else’s point of view, analyzing how differently your behaviors and mannerisms change based on who you are interacting with. Upon viewing the first couple of minutes of the movie, I thought the plot and understanding of the movie’s progression would be easy to follow. However, as the movie continued past its opening scene, things started to get a little interesting. The main character is tasked with juggling nine appointments throughout the film, where each appointment requires him to not only drastically change his appearance but also shift the way he carries himself and interacts with each individual.
We see him go from an actor in a developing video game to a hostile leprechaun, all while only making these adjustments in the limo he is being driven around in. One thing that truly stuck out to me was the scene when he was tasked with essentially assassinating someone, and in the end, the person ended up being himself in a different costume. After completing the task, he proceeds to change the seemingly lifeless body out of its current attire and make it look more like what he was currently wearing. In the end, the body ends up coming back to life and killing him. While a lot of things in this movie did not make much sense to me, the question I propose is: throughout all the appointments and costume changes, what do you think him essentially killing himself represents in the context of this movie being based on one’s perspective of you?
After watching Holy Motors today, I had to see what else the director, Leos Carax, had out there for me to watch. I found that, in addition to notable feature films like Boy Meets Girl and Annette, he’s also known for his shorts. I watched “my last minute,” which is a 1-minute short film commissioned by the Vienna Film Festival.
CONTENT WARNING FOR GRAPHIC AND SHORT DEPICTION OF SUICIDE AND DRUG ABUSE: I will also be discussing this content in the blog post.
A defining factor of underground film is the lack of sense or characterized motivation for a character’s actions. In this short, the character depicted lights a cigarette, then immediately goes to his laptop, which is on an open Word document, and types “tonight, I stop smoking.”
Then, he puts out his cigarette, and quickly opens a drawer at his desk, grabs a gun, and shoots himself in the head. This is also a seemingly uncharacteristic, or at least absurd, action. The scene moves quickly in this small minute, and the character moves without hesitation. What I found most interesting and relevant to Holy Motors is the final thirteen seconds of the short.
It’s a quick sequence of a toddler, presumably the character when he was much younger. The child has its mouth open, we hear static, the frame zooms in on the child, and then black. This reminded me of Holy Motors a lot because of its quick transition time. In our class feature, it was sometimes hard to tell what was true to Oscar’s life and what was an appointment. With this short, we can see Carax’s tendency for quick, sensational directional choices with the character’s spontaneous actions. Additionally, we see a tendency for playing with graphic quality of his images in both, controlling colors as well as clarity to influence the viewer’s experience.
When the movie first started, I had a hard time understanding the direction it was heading in. As it progressed, I began to get a better grasp of what was happening, but not necessarily why it was happening or why certain choices were made. I wasn’t sure if it was the way it was filmed or if those choices were meant to convey a deeper message or contribute to the narrative. Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975) is a neo-noir film that follows the ultimate downfall of a detective dealing with marital issues who distracts himself by taking on the case of a runaway teenage girl. While this general plot can be found in many summaries online, I personally found it difficult to follow when the story jumped between Harry’s broken home and the unfolding murder mystery.
David Bordwell’s “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice” defines art cinema as a distinct mode that rejects classical Hollywood conventions of linear storytelling, defined cause and effect, and psychological clarity. Rather, it emphasizes realism, authorial expressivity, and ambiguity. Bordwell writes about how art films often feature psychologically complex characters, loosely structured narratives, and situations that don’t come to complete resolution. He argues that art cinema films, while more complex, actually present a more realistic version of reality by incorporating the deep complexities and problems left unsolved that frequently occur in real life.
A film I watched recently is The Hangover (2009), and while the movie is definitely a mainstream Hollywood comedy, it’s interesting to think about how the film adapts specific techniques from the art cinema style. Bordwell writes, “Just as the Hollywood silent cinema borrowed avant-garde devices but as- similated them to narrative ends, so recent American filmmaking has appropriated art-film devices”, talking about how mainstream Hollywood films incorporate elements of art cinema. He goes on to list specific examples such as the open ending of Five Easy Pieces (1970) or the “psychological ambiguity” of The Conversation (1974).
The structure of The Hangover disrupts the typical cause-effect style of classical narrative cinema. All the events of the story are told out of order to keep the mystery of what happened that night alive, and the viewer is subject to extreme restricted narration. The film opens on the day of the wedding, near the end of the actual story, when the groomsmen call the bride to admit they lost the Doug (the groom). From there, the story cuts to two days previous to that as the boys are shown embarking on Doug’s bachelor party. Finally, the film cuts from the beginning of the night right to the chaotic morning after the party, where Doug is missing and no one can remember a thing from the night before.
This non-linear structure immediately places the audience in a state of confusion and curiosity, mirroring the characters’ own disorientation. Similar to the art cinema Bordwell describes, the film asks viewers to piece together what happened through fragments of memory, visual clues, and subjective perspectives.
This week’s readings both explore what defines art cinema. Bordwell describes art cinema through realism, authorial expressivity, and ambiguity. Unlike classical Hollywood films, which follow clear cause-and-effect logic, art films leave uncertainty and interpretation to the audience. Frodon’s interview with Carax shows how these ideas of art film are embodied in Holy Motors, where everyday life itself becomes a performance.
In Holy Motors, Monsieur Oscar travels through Paris, performing multiple identities, such as a beggar, a father, and a killer. Although there are no visible cameras or audiences watching him, he continues to perform and act. This reflects authorial expressivity, as Carax blurs the line between art and life. The stretch limousine that Oscar rides represents the realism of modern alienation as it looks luxurious on the outside but feels empty inside. It reflects how technology connects people, yet simultaneously isolates them. The ending, where machines speak, creates ambiguity. Audiences are confused about whether they are watching life or just another performance as Carax blurs the line between human and machine. Human Oscar performs like a machine the entire day, and now the machine has started to talk like a human being.
Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite also embodied the art cinema mode. Its realism is grounded in the vivid contrast between the wealthy home and the semibasement house. Bong’s authorial expressivity is evident through symbolic motifs such as stairs and rain. The vertical movement of the stairs represents the class hierarchy in the film. The rain reveals the stark reality of how the experience of rain can change significantly depending on one’s social status. Finally, the ambiguous ending, whether the son ever rescues his father, reveals life’s uncertainty rather than a happy ending or resolution.
These are questions we can think about:
If life itself becomes a performance, can we ever distinguish between authenticity and acting?
Does the director’s control over ambiguity make the film more honest or more artificial?
When figuring out what I wanted to write about for this week’s blog post, I noticed many were interpreting the reading from this week in a modern context. To add on to that trend, in a perfect way to talk about a very underrated movie, I would like to emphasize the artistic efforts from Enemy (2013, Denis Villeneuve).
According to David Bordwell, the author behind the Art Cinema Essay, some of the aspects that make up art cinema, contrary to a standard Hollywood movie, are key stylistic inputs that don’t exist in the overdone Hollywood blockbuster. Even though Bordwell’s argument was released in 1979, this notion still holds up to this day. With sequels and big name brand movies dominating Hollywood, it is a treat for audiences to find a movie nowadays that tries something unique or different. Enemy is one of those movies that does exactly that, and unfortunately did not translate to the box office.
First off, Bordwell notes in his essay that artistic films often include morally ambiguous, confused characters that progress throughout the film. The protagonist of Enemy, Adam/Anthony Bell, is a man who is discovering his morality throughout the entirety of the film. The basis for the plot of this movie is that Adam is fighting against an “enemy” version of himself. He interprets his life as he is fighting against a clone, however in reality, it is just himself in a different conscious. The longer the movie goes on and the more that Adam finds about his other self, the more that his morals develop from the blank slate that he is in the beginning of the film.
Secondly, an art film must explore philosophical or social themes that tell the audience something about the human condition. At its simplest form, this movie is about a man who finds an enemy version of himself. However, this movie covers interesting themes of marriage and responsibility in a very interesting way: a massive spider. All throughout this movie, Villeneuve continues to cut to scenes of a massive spider towering over the city that Adam lives in. In no casual Hollywood movie would this occur as it confuses the audience. On my first watch of Enemy, I had absolutely zero idea what the spider the size of a skyscraper meant towards the plot of the movie, or even why the characters weren’t discussing this plot point. In reality, the spider represents the main character’s fear of commitment to his marriage and is an encapsulation of the feeling of being trapped by his wife. Adam simply can’t stop himself from giving into lust and the spider getting larger and larger over the city is representation of that.
One last aspect of Enemy that I appreciate very much is the open-endedness of the ending. Bordwell highlights the importance of a film with unanswered questions at the end. Now, if Enemy is known for one thing, it might be its confusing ending. After Adam has successfully defeated his other self and everything seems to fit for a perfect, happy ending, the movie simply ends with Adam staring at a massive tarantula spider in his bed room that jumps away from him. For viewers expecting a simple ending that a typical Hollywood picture would deliver, this ending makes absolutely no sense and calls for open discussion and speculation as to the meaning of what the comically large spider in the bedroom represents. A clear indication of the artistic value that Denis Villeneuve put into this movie.
Overall, Enemy is a very underrated movie that didn’t do too well at the box office, most likely because of the very artistic and metaphorical decisions that Villeneuve added to the movie. To me, this movie perfectly fits the art film that Bordwell talks about in his essay. However, an artistic movie doesn’t always have to fail at the box office and in popularity. Are there any ways to imbue artistic filmmaking according to Bordwell into a movie while still making it digestible to the average watcher? or is that impossible because it is meant to be viewed by someone with an appreciate of the art of filmmaking?
Leos Carax is a French filmmaker who is known for Holy Motors. Carax’s film can be considered an “art cinema.” According to Bordwell, “art cinema” is a distinct type of film that is based on realism and authorial expressivity (which is defined as “recurrent violations of the classical norm”). Holy Motors is an art cinema due to its blend of realism and strangeness. The character of Mr. Oscar is realistic because he is psychologically complex, which is Bordwell’s definition of character realism. In the interview, Leos Carax commented on his movie and apologized for being vague in his response to a question from the interviewer. Carax explained that he created a science-fiction world where Mr. Oscar’s job is to show the “experience of living in the now.” He aimed to depict real life, which is already strange and complex, and, in his opinion, no “flashbacks or playing with the narrative” were needed. He preferred real-life ambiguity. Carax described the film as his “most unconscious” film, born as an image rather than a plot or a logical cause-and-effect reasoning. The events and motivations of the characters remained open-ended and not fully explained; they were intentionally left ambiguous (vague). The realism of the film does not rely on a well-defined plot, but rather on the movement of physical objects – human bodies, machines, and animals. Carax was also unconventional in his approach to shooting the movie: the film was made without reviewing daily footage, and Carax placed himself in front of the camera.
I recently watched the film Ready or Not (2019), a horror-comedy film. In the film, the characters are constantly using violence in a game-like way for unclear reasons. The main character, Grace, just got married to Alex and is suddenly asked by her new family to draw a card to play a game on her wedding night. Grace, then, is being hunted down (to be killed) by her in-laws after pulling the card to play hide and seek. As viewers, we are stuck throughout the film, wondering why all of this had to happen.
Later, we find out that this is a ritual that the family does every time someone marries into the family. The family believes that they have to kill Grace, or they will die because of a curse that runs in the family. Up until the end of the film, we do not know why the curse exists, and if it is even real or made up. This makes viewers question the sanity of the family as they do not seem to care enough if they shoot each other, and they are trying to kill Grace (a new member of the family who has done them no wrong) without remorse. Even at the end of the film, there is still not much clarity; it is very ambiguous as to why the family was cursed, how the curse works, and why Grace pulling the card to play hide and seek meant she had to die. There is no closure given to the viewers or to Grace.
Question to consider:
How does ambiguity change the way we interpret a film?
In this week’s reading, David Bordwell’s essay “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice” analyzes the art cinema as a mode of film practice rather than a genre, meaning it’s defined by a set of formal and narrative techniques rather than thematic content. This greatly differs from traditional Hollywood films, in which characters have a clear-cut goal with a straightforward plot, while Art Cinema has looser plots with complex and ambiguous protagonists in a “realer” way.
A recent movie I watched was “Wicked”, which although in fact is a Hollywood blockbuster, there are certain aspects that can resonate with Borwell’s Art Cinema. In Bordwell’s essay, he says that art cinema prioritizes psychological depth over straightforward plot, exploring the inner thoughts of its characters. InWicked, the story delves deep into Elphaba’s motivations and moral struggles, rather than just a linear good-versus-evil plot. Bordwell also highlights narrative ambiguity in art cinema, where events are open to interpretation and outcomes are not fully resolved. Although the actual movie is pretty straightforward, when combined with the context of the original story, many interpretations and nuances begin to show. We see the familiar world from Elphaba’s perspective and begin questioning what was actually real. Finally, Bordwell says that the protagonist in art cinema is often complex and morally ambivalent. Elphaba fits this model perfectly, as she subverts traditional heroic and villainous roles, making the audience question what it means to be “good” or “evil.”
Although some connections can be drawn between the essay and “Wicked,” there are many points where the movie is different from Art Cinema and is instead a traditional Hollywood blockbuster. For example, although Elphaba is complex and morally ambiguous, she still has a strong goal and drives the plot forward. Additionally, although the movie has very human characters with human thoughts, the movie is still very fantastical and nothing like the “naturalistic setting” and realistic points in the essay. The plot is very structured and has a pretty distinct beginning, middle, and end, even if the context of the original story gives the movie a complex story structure. In conclusion, Wicked is more like a mainstream musical movie with some art cinema elements, rather than an actual example of art cinema.
