MovieChat Forums > Holy Motors (2012) Discussion > Okay i think my friends and I figured t...

Okay i think my friends and I figured this out!! Thoughts are welcome


This film talks about what the movie industry has become (films about murders, Jesus, abused people) and how the 'art' in making a movie is gone ... you can see that the main actor's name is also Oscar as a mockery of the prize craved by every film maker. There is also reference to the "forest" the Wood...holy-wood when the movie starts the director enters a movie theater filled with people that are blind ... so it's all summed up there. Blind people watching commercial meaningless BS movies ... movies that lie a lot. No more art, no purity just lies and the obsessions with murders and sex this was my take on it...i must say that at first when I saw the business man dress up as an old beggar lady i thought that it was a man seeking love and this was the only way he could get love...that i thought would be an interesting twist...but this film just continued on with Oscar playing different parts in this interactive actor's life.

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I think that´s about right, I thouhgt more or less the same thing when I saw it.

they cured him alright

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Here's an alternative interpretation: Oscar is in fact a monkey. Strange future human degradation or sort of. Last act isn't an act, he indeed comes home, tired. All staged plays were fun for apes to watch.

Which gives place for another interpretation:

Oscar came home, he is not a monkey but he sees his family as apes because he cannot relate to them anymore being so used of playing, acting. Being himself he finds something impossible.

Those AI cars true are a totally new dimension :).

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Good analysis! I think you got it, but there's (maybe) more to it. It could be a commentary on the nature of acting too, but indeed it deals with the film industry. I feel I need to rewatch this one.

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Alex Oscar is an anagram of Leos Carax, the director. Nothing to do with the Oscar. Leos Carax has always used Denis Lavant as his alter ego in his films (except Pola X). Hence the name in the film.

The forest sequence is not referencing Hollywood. The director was influenced by a line in Dante's inferno " Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark", the sequence actually referencing the film The Blood of a Poet by Jean Cocteau where the protagonist was looking for a door and falls through a mirror.

The segment with the old lady again referenced a film, this time the directors' own Les Amants du Pont Neuf, a film about a homeless couple, depicting the miseries of the deprived and socially outcast. In an interview the director said he often saw a decrepit beggarwoman on the streets of Paris, and nurtured a fantasy that he might change clothes and assume her role. He decided to do that by having Denis Lavant, his alter ego, do just that in the film.

But he was referencing cinema all the way through the film. In the Jean segment with Kylie, she was made up to look like the actress Jean Seberg hence the title. The song she sings was written to sound like one used in the Jacques Demy film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. She was also suicidal as was Seberg.

There are references all the way through the film.



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Well yours is an interesting take. Would you hazard a guess as to what it all means because I must admit that I am totally lost here.

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The film doesn't have a central theme, it is a hymn to cinema, the cinema that has influenced the director throughout his career. It can appear to be confusing and if you don't have some knowledge of film especially so. It is a cinematic puzzle and the director lets you make up your own mind, very anti-Hollywood. Interestingly one director Carax does admire is David Lynch and you can see the parallels.


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Well I think I have an extensive knowledge of film history and it still didn't do much for me. I do admit that while I am an admirer or David Lynch's early films. The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet especially, but not of his later stuff. No matter. Not every film can appeal to every person.

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It is a film you either love or hate. I agree about David Lynch, his earlier films are better.



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I am curious about the often rabid fan adulation of films like these (The Tree of Life, a film I detested, is another example), films with no discernable plot and minimal characterization. I very much enjoy a complex, convoluted story, but I do think that the ultimate purpose of a film should be to tell a story. Allusions to other films and filmmakers are fine, but I do not think that they should be the only purpose of a film. Just my opinion.

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It's just a matter of taste. I too much prefer a film that has a story, but there are films, like Holy Motors, which I found fascinating because of the filmic references and it made me think about what it was about even though I came to no conclusions. Sometimes it doesn't work as with The Tree of Life, which was superb visually but narratively didn't work at all. The same director, Terrence Malick, did make Badlands which was magnificent and had a strong narrative.

The function of film is not necessarily to tell a straightforward story. It can also be thought of as experimental, personal, poetic, impressionistic, something that is found in all forms of art. They are, by their very nature, uncommercial. Directors who have made such films include Godard, Tarkovsky, Bunuel amongst others. They are filmmakers who are inherently selfish as they do not consider the final audience, they are not important, as long as the creator is satisfied.

As I said, I do prefer a film that tells a story, but I also enjoy the work of the directors I mentioned and others. It's just a matter of taste.



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This gives me a factual and realistic viewpoint of the movie. Very interesting indeed. However, I have a slightly different opinion. I think Oscar is an angel. One of those "real-life angels", moving things around, helping people by slightly nudging their lives towards a resolution they need. Hence the mystic ending. Something like this "rude angel":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTtblUTA0sg

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And yet this movie is just a useless meaningless movie for smug hipster who think they know *beep*

Crap movie, as crap as all the hollywood action cliche movies, except this wasn't even entertaining just boring and weird.

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You are an angry person... I enjoyed the movie does that make me a smug hipster? hahahah

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Mightn't the film be useful and meaningful for "smug hipsters" who actually do know (whatever has been beeped)?

Is there something about "smug hipster's" money that means film makers shouldn't cater to them as an audience?

Alternatively, if "smug Hipsters" are as vacuous as you assume, why not make a film that exploits their manifold weaknesses? Hipsters are simple and obvious and easily understood (right?) so you shouldn't have any trouble making a small fortune from them, right?
____
"If you ain't a marine then you ain't *beep*

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Sensible analysis. Thanks much; I was struggling to find a focus, and you nailed it.

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A lot of interesting thoughts here. I just finished watching it so I'm still digesting it in my mind.

Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, or doesn't.

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I can agree with much of that. I saw it as a commentary on movie,asking as well.

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