Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Holy Motors Review



I just recently watched Holy Motors and felt a review was necessary. The movie instantly dives in without explanation and starts delivering one the most heart felt and strange movies I have ever seen. The main character Oscar begins by bringing us into his world of appointments and totally fragmented yet poignet take on characters and the lives they affect. It's not clear right away what the point of these appointments will be. We just get thrown into the situation he has been in many times before and are along for the ride and he is our chauffeur, which interestingly enough has his own chauffeur. This movie is one abstract thought after the next all brought to life by Oscar. Throughout you see him changing his makeup down to the smallest details and you see the dedication actors can have for their craft not only literally by Denis Lavant (Oscar) but by the character he plays. We see Oscar constantly putting on make up and diving into characters and spending time and energy doing so. He does it for the beauty of acting. He is here to perform for us because he loves doing it.  It is the most intriguing aspect of the movie. Some lessons or thoughts thrown our way as the audience include: a man performing for us, the audience is asleep, reality and the unreal, having kids, getting old, losing love, weird trumps beauty, man with beast, punishment is being yourself, accepting death, everything is okay when you see the next generation will take over, cars talking, killing yourself or your clone, this is for our entertainment. So many times the movie speaks to a jaded movie goer it's clear this movie wants me to care about cinema again and for me to understand that I shouldn't take things for granted. There are often times something happens in the movie and I get nothing from it. Other times I get deep meanings that I haven't thought of before. I can only hope and imagine that the parts that did nothing for me do something for someone else. It's the classic thought of "well maybe he had a better idea" syndrome. You can't continue to do the same thing and doing something differently is knocking on the door of enlightenment. Bottom line is this: Holy Motors may not be fully appreciated by everyone but will garner new fans of cinema that will show them the rabbit hole cinema is and simply please the movie goers that have already "seen it all". 


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