Holy Motors

Holy Motors

Directed by Leos Carax

I am slightly torn on how I feel about this Holy Motors: do I love it, or do I really love it?

Leos Carax, the director of this bizarre anthology of sorts, has never been a director I felt the need to look further into the works of. Now, I feel it's almost a necessity. I doubt there exists another film quite like this, but if there is, I imagine his filmography would be the perfect place for me to begin my search. It would be worth taking a look into, regardless of the outcome, because I genuinely want to know what else this man has to offer.

With all the sprawling scope of an epic, focused on a singular story - or, rather, a single man as he goes seamlessly from one story to the next. To explain this movie would be to over-simplify something which deserves more than to be viewed so singularly. This movie may not make sense in a lot of ways, but that's part of the appeal. View it how you will, but odds are you'll be thinking about it long after it's finished.

Denis Lavant delivers one of the strongest performances of the year - or should I say, several of the strongest performances of the year. Embodying somewhere in the vein of 10 characters who are all one single man. His performance is that of a performer; but who the audience is, we never know. Are these performances for the viewer itself? Though the film's audience is never officially addressed, I wouldn't be too surprised if this string of non sequitur performances was intended to covertly break the fourth wall. I wouldn't be surprised. That's just how this movie seems.

I love how this movie never takes time to explain itself. Usually, I would find this annoying, but this is the kind of experimental film-making that doesn't need to try to make you think, it forces you think. What is it really about? What does it all mean? These aren't the kind of questions you could easily find the answer to on Google. In fact, I feel these are simply rhetorical questions, ones that don't have, and aren't meant to have an answer. Purposeful ambiguity can be infuriating, but in this case it's more intriguing than anything else.

This is not the kind of movie I would find myself recommending to most people, as I'm sure they'd think I was a lunatic for thinking they'd actually enjoy it. But it's definitely something I would recommend to certain audiences: ones who want to experience something riveting, bizarre, inventive, and completely mind-blowing.