MovieChat Forums > Holy Motors (2012) Discussion > Masterpiece or fraud?

Masterpiece or fraud?

posted 11 years ago by tylerdanielblack
9 replies | jump to latest

The way I see it is, you have your mainstream movies that put all their emphasis on entertainment, visual spectaculars and far reaching appeal. When done correctly, they’re perfectly good fun i.e. Die Hard (“agent Johnson, agent Johnson … no relation”) and when done with no other intent than to rob the public blind they’re infuriating i.e. Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Then you got your art-house films, little slices of life where the focus is warts and all realism, plot, character and emotional investment through storytelling opposed to aesthetic fireworks. When done correctly, you can really connect and identify with them i.e. Shame, Blue Valentine, This Is England, There Will Be Blood and when done with no other intent than to appeal to a very pretentious and snooty pseudo-intellectual art student demographic can be quite tedious, boring and pointless i.e. Southland Tales, Synecdoche, New York and, you guessed it, Holy Motors.

Some people will defend this films by implying that anyone who dislikes or did not understand them lacks artistic insight but if you can deconstruct the subliminal messages in pictures such as The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey, I think that argument falls flat on its face.

I suspect that many people want to defend nonsensical art-house films in order to feel as though they belong to an ultra-minority of insightful and enlightened geniuses and distance themselves as much as possible from the “whoa, dude, Transformers is like, totally the best movie ever made”, and I kind got some sympathy for that but taking The Shining as an example again, anyone who has watched Room 237 will appreciate that these so called enlightened few are really just crackpot crazy who see whatever the hell they want to see in a film and immediately think it is some coded and cryptic hidden subliminal wink from the director that was meant for them and only them to discover.

In The Shining, one guy spends ten minutes arguing about how the film is really just a commentary on the holocaust for the simple reason that a typewriter that appears in a scene is from a German manufacturer that was in production during World War 2 which is a bit like saying that Jaws is about a woman on her period because you see some scenes where blood is prevalent.

The thing is, I refuse to believe that the writer, director, actors and creative team behind Holy Motors all just got together and said “hey, we have no idea what we’re doing or what the purpose of what this film is, so let’s just randomly shoot a bunch of random stuff which is a bit weird and makes no logistical sense and then we’ll cleverly package it as an art-house film and let the snooty students defend it to the hilt”.

Clearly, someone, somewhere down the line had a vision for this film or felt it carried a point or a purpose. My gripe is, if it’s so cryptic or buried that no one can see it, understands it or are beyond caring about it when they do finally stumble across it, then what’s the point?

Until someone can explain to me why I should bother to continue to invest my time in films of this ilk, which I have an increasingly low tolerance for, then I can’t help but continue to believe that Holy Motors and films like it fall squarely into the “fraud” category.

The Dude Abides...

[–] GuyOnTheLeft 11 years ago

Masterpiece. But de gustibus, to each his own, and all that.

I have at other times been in a position where I can sympathise with your sentiments. I absolutely hated "Tree of Life", for instance; and I was underwhelmed by all the surrealistic Luis Bunuel films I tried (though I did like "Belle de Jour" quite a bit).

So let me assure you that I won't doggedly insist on the brilliance of a boring, seemingly pointless film just to be all intellectual and arty. But this movie (and, by the way, "Synecdoche, New York"), I found immensely entertaining. Does it "mean" something profound? I don't know. But I just really enjoyed it. ::shrug::

--------
See a list of my favourite films here: http://www.flickchart.com/slackerinc

[–] tylerdanielblack 11 years ago

See, that's interesting because I'm quite fond of Tree of Life (the dinosaur sequence aside, which admittedly, is a little of an embarrassing miss step). I saw Tree of Life at the cinema and found it engaging if drawn out but my wife walked out after twenty minutes, there were frustrated sighs throughout and the second the credits rolled the guy in the seat behind me said "I thought I was going to kill myself". Tree of Life sat better with me on repeat viewing when I saw it a year later on TV and my wife even appreciated it the second time around. With Tree of Life I think there is a clear point, purpose, message etc. so while I can understand that it's not to everyone's taste, there is something to latch onto. Holy Motors just seemed entirely random to me, which is fine if it engages you in the same way that, say, Eraserhead did with me, but again, the draw of that film was its creeping and uneasy atmosphere which, again, is something definable. I wasn't angry or annoyed with Holy Motors, I just couldn't find anything about it to be engaged with or impressed by.

Synecdoche, New York, I am and have been for a while willing to give a second day in court because I do think there is something in that which I didn't pick up on first time around.

The Dude Abides...

[–] robl0051 11 years ago

If you're willing to hear me out...

I didn't care much about what was happening overall, the narrative I mean, but I did care about Oscar and the toll these "characters" were taking on him. I was also intrigued by his past love and what they might have shared, and was content with it being left a mystery. So where I cared less about the story I did find some footing in regards to understanding the absurdity of acting as a profession, and the acting we all do in our everyday lives, through the character of Oscar.

Which lead me to what I think a lot of the visuals and ideas were trying to get at; for me, all of these seemingly unconnected stories really explored the relationships that happen between the viewer and the artist in cinema. The audience watching a film at the main titles and oscar's boss telling him those who were watching his "performances" were not believing him anymore, both helped to underline the metaphor between oscar's daily performances and the act of making movies.

I guess what I am suggesting is just because there isn't a strong story or B-Line of occurrences to connect the scenes together, anchored by reality, doesn't mean they aren't connected by more abstract and textual ideas that are, in fact, very real. Holy Motors is a dissection of film as it exists today, and in age where digitization is slowly stripping people of their identities, where HAS film found itself now? How are we digesting film these days, and how is that process effecting those who wish to continue to make and share film? As a society, how romantic and jaded are we really?

I mean, look at the lengths Mr. Oscar and holy motors have to go to just to make their viewers Believe what they're seeing in their world.

So every scene, no matter how small or strange, all share in the same meta conversation about cinema. And I, and I would think the director, might argue that THAT conversation is a strong enough backbone to support these scenes. The meaning of the film is in that conversation between the different scenes, not necessarily in the journey of the characters that inhabit them.

Just my take though...

The limos talking made me think that maybe Oscar was right about the viewer being unseen, maybe the viewers are machines. Which once again brings to light the connection between technology and identity and how that line has been blurred in our generation, and especially, in the world of this film.

Sorry for the length, thanks for the time.

[–] Grethiwha 11 years ago

I don't like the term 'art film'. As a very general term for, I guess, un-Hollywood movies, sure, but when you try to define it in a singular way... You describe realist dramas, and then place Holy Motors in the same category, and fault it for not investing you emotionally in the way those films do. But this is not a realist drama and it's not a movie to get emotionally invested in.

Some people like to look for (or contrive) deeper meanings in everything. This is not how I watch movies. I watch movies to see something new. For me, watching a rich man get out of a limo dressed like a demented leprechaun and run through a cemetery eating the flowers off the graves, is a greater entertainment than anything in Die Hard. For me this movie was more fun than most clichéd mainstream entertainment movies.

I also like processing all the movies weird and new ideas in my mind... The guy's "appointments", I thought, are like a pastiche of movie scenes, but totally unconnected, and always kind of wrong in some hilarious way. I wondered, is this how the director sees the life of an actor? And trying to rationalize the character's motive... I eventually concluded his motive was literally to make the movie. These thoughts are fun for me; these are the kinds of pleasures I derived from the film.

Others will probably disagree, but if the director did have some kind of cryptic, obscure meaning behind the film, I suspect he realized it's not important for the audience to ever find it. It's irrelevant to enjoying the film. And I think 'cult film' is more apt a title for this than 'art film'; if it's not to your taste, that's fine of course.

--- grethiwha -------- My Favourite Films:
http://www.imdb.com/list/Bw65XZIpkH8/

[–] tylerdanielblack 11 years ago

I understand exactly what you are a saying and where you are coming from. This isn't a realist film and I don't think there is point looking for any deeper meaning because even if it is there (and that's debatable) its so cryptic and well hidden that surely only the director will ever know what it is. I also understand your point regarding "art film". I simply use this broad generalization towards films that are not and were never intended to be mainstream movies.

My problem with the film appears to be the very same thing you liked about it. For me, watching a guy get out of a limo as a leprechaun and run around a cemetery eating flowers wasn't entertaining at all precisely because there appeared to be no point or purpose and because it simply wasn't funny or amusing. I just questioned why I was wasting my time watching it and I felt that throughout the entire film.

The Dude Abides...

[–] robl0051 11 years ago

I agree with both your points, especially in terms of how to each of us differently digest unorthodox and ambiguous films of which we know nothing about, but as it turns out, upon further inspection of the film and it's director's history, some interesting points do come up.

First of all, it is the actual director of Holy Motors, Leos Carax, who plays the man who gets out of bed to discover a movie theater hidden in his room at the beginning. Another interesting yet sad fact is that Carax's wife committed suicide a year before the film premiered!

So, a real life filmmaker plays a character in his own film whose soul purpose is to watch a film, which includes a section in which the main character's lover commits suicide, mirroring a fairly recent real life tragedy for him.

Maybe this whole thing, through the prism of a widowed filmmaker, might shed a new autobiographical light on Holy Motors for you guys, it certainly has for me.

[–] Grethiwha 11 years ago

Yeah, I see where you're coming from too. Rad! Glad we understand each other. :)

I will add about Synecdoche, New York though, I think that one's a bit of a different story. I think there is something more profound in that, something to grasp for – for me in the way it takes on the texture of subjective memories... events in that character's life melding together, losing track of time... and representing probably a lifetime's worth of artistic projects as if one singular, failed attempt to express something... Hard to explain, but I get more out of it the more I watch it... BUT, again, I find the individual scenes uniquely entertaining and often humourous enough that I can enjoy the movie on that level, for example the scenes with the house on fire – I don't know that that means anything but I find it highly amusing. And if you don't find it amusing or engaging in its uniqueness first and foremost, if you just find it pointless, I can totally understand why you wouldn't want to dig deeper into the film. I actually have the same problem myself with, for example, Tarkovsky's films – maybe they do have a deeper meaning, maybe they can be emotionally rewarding, for some, but I don't find his scenes engage me in the first place; the visual beauty of his films alone is not enough for me, and I can't find a point or purpose. But, whatever, he's obviously revered I think he's just not for me.

--- grethiwha -------- My Favourite Films:
http://www.imdb.com/list/Bw65XZIpkH8/

[–] tylerdanielblack 11 years ago

Yep. Had the same problem with Tarkovsky as well - Solaris. I had to stop watching it, walk away, come back, carry on where I left off about six times before I could make it to the end. Had similar problems recently with Mr. Nobody as well. More recently, a lot of people were very hostile towards Only God Forgives but that just had me transfixed from the very first seconds. I loved the moody sets, the lighting, the drawn out shots of people's fists and tortured expressions. I loved that to bits.

The Dude Abides...

[–] robl0051 11 years ago

I'm also one of the few that thought Only God Forgives was entertaining. I watched it, maybe, three times after my original viewing. I feel like there's so much not being said between the scenes, information that would have really helped shape the film into something better. I don't mind a director being withholding, but I think NWR kept a little too much to himself with that film, and the whole thing suffers because of it. It feels like he was really inspired by the style of "tree of life", so much so that he wanted to experiment with it for this story; just wasn't the right story. And all of this is a pity because, as you said, it's a gorgeous, wonderful thing to look at, even experience, but he probably needed a little more clarification on the characters motivation than super detailed torture scenes which become unintentionally repetitive if he wanted the impact to last longer. I felt the same way about Springbreakers, that it suffered from the "tree of life" style too; that one even had the quiet narration. In the end, after several viewings, I was able to take something significant away from Only God Forgives. Sadly, I know it had the potential to effect me much more in just one viewing, and that that opportunity was squandered because the director went whole hog with his style. I don't care if NWF reigns back that style for his next film, I just hope the story will be a better fit to that style.

I agree with the interpretation of New York, that it holds some interesting ideas about how memories melt into each other over time. Which is why I always saw the burning house as just as much a foreshadow of something terrible as the stool was in "Million Dollar Baby," and why couldn't this movie have foreshadows. But more importantly that if the film is about memories blending into each other it would make sense that Hoffman's character would always associate the most horrifying and impactful memory with that person everytime he thought of her, or in this case that house. In his mind, she will always be the woman who died in a house fire. Grief can mess with people. I know someone who lost someone a decade ago but cannot finish a story or thought about the person they lost without commenting on the tragedy and uselessness of how they died.