Holy Motors

Holy Motors is one of the best films I have seen in awhile. I say this because I was completely captivated by what was playing onscreen in front of me. We follow a man who plays 24 different characters throughout the course of a day. We witness him do all of these character changes in front of us, but I really didn’t question the reality of the situations. In this film, things are so unreal that I started to just accept them for that.

One of my favorite, and possibly one of the weirdest scenes in the movie is in the beginning. The main character is running in front of a green screen while all of these great graphics play on the screen. He is in a suit to detect his movement. This is for a film within the film. It is one of the many characters that the main character plays. After awhile the man turns into a snake that is hooking up with another snake. From this point on I knew Holy Motors was going to get weird.

As Holy Motors plays on, I started to wonder who the intended audience was for the man. Are we the audience?

Another part that truly stuck out to me, partially because it felt the most “real,” was when he played the character with the daughter. He picked up his daughter from a friends house and asked her how her time was. The daughter lies at first, but then fesses up and explains that she didn’t have a good time and wasn’t being truthful. This felt the most really because it was the most relatable. A daughter lying to her father and getting caught for it is a pretty common thing. The dad then explains that she will be punished. Her punishment is living with herself for the rest of her life. For some reason, this part stuck with me for a while- possibly because the girl was so young. The man has many other interactions throughout the film with different people, but I continued to wonder about the little girl after the scene changed. The character seems to get very tired after this scene.

Who exactly is the main character? It seems to be a big mystery. His true self really isn’t revealed. Maybe the closest reveal we have is of him and the limo driver sharing a laugh. Even at the end of the film, we are led to believe he is going home to his family, when in actuality he is just playing another role. He ends up going home to a family of gorillas. This is how Holy Motors messes with expectations. Just when I thought that we would be given closure I was proved wrong. But, I think it is great in that way. The film challenges are way of thinking and viewing things.