Holy Motors

Holy Motors. 

I don’t quite know what to say about this film. I didn’t think it was that great but I still felt compelled to watch it until the end.  Enough happened in it to spur me to finish it. 

The best way I can summon up this movie is that it’s a French version of a David Lynch film. So if you like Lynch type of movies you will like this movie, without a doubt. There is enough odd things that happen visually in this movie to teach a college class on and I have no doubt college professors are already lining up to interpret this film. Therein lies the main problem with this film, it seems more concerned with interpretation than in exploring any kind of main theme or the ideas raised within it.  There is little or no characterization, which in my opinion is a major fault.  Because if I was given something to know about the motivation of the main character, I think it would have helped me to understand him and sympathize with the movie better, instead of worrying about interpreting everything on screen. 

 I mean there was a lot going on this film dealing with identities, acting, and preforming, but none of it seemed to weave together in an understandable way. A quote from Shakespeare also summons up this movie, “The whole world is a stage and we are but the actors on it.” In a sense this is a sci-fi film where the idea is the drive of the story and not the technology that makes up what happens.  But if the idea is going to be the drive there has to be someone driving the idea and I never felt there was a driver for this idea, which is a shame.  Because the idea of people who have a job of acting out things in real life, as if it were a job, is a very interesting idea for a society to evolve too. Even now I find myself thinking about the idea and how to make it better by actually having the main character be a character because that’s a world I would like to further explore and was very interested in. That is one of the reasons I think I stuck around until the end because it was an idea sci-fi movie, of which there aren’t a lot of those out there now.  So I gave it a little more wiggle room than I normally would, being a huge sci-fi fan all I tend to do that. Most sci-fi seems more concerned with technology and special effects instead of weaving those two together to make the kind of sci-fi movie which explores ideas instead of being just visual eye candy. This movie is no 2001, which has a story line and a narrative, but also leaves the viewer enough for interpretation without sacrificing the drive of the narrative or story. I never once felt left behind in the story of 2001 like I did with Holy Motors and most of Lynch’s film to which the smug college student or proffer would say, “You just don’t understand it. You don’t get it. The director and writer are just so much more advanced than you.” To that I say, “Have it.”