Holy Motors/Week 4

A sequence of chaotic narratives starts poetically with a man slowly emerging from a nights sleep and escaping through a wall into what will become Holy Motors. The characters played by Mr. Olsen go through diverse emotional, physical and impractical human experiences. The Director Leos Carax created a storytelling approach that is off the wall, I could watch it hundreds of times and every time I would find another reason why I don’t actually have it figured out.  Leos Carax used a sequence that is oddly familiar to me, it seems likes its all happening in a long intense dream. From one act of violence and intolerance to another scene dealing with passion and love, it reminds me of the odd discomfort when you wish you were dreaming something else, but you accept it because its your dream. While you are asleep it all makes sense and you don’t question the validity of what is going on. Similarly in Holy Motors it barely makes enough sense for you to not mistrust the body of work. Leos Carax is exploring his ideas of the human experience through abstract performance film using a vague storyline to keep the audience engaged. The character of Mr. Olsen himself is a catalyst that enables Carax to bounce from various human characters and experiences in one film. 
            It takes a few appointments to theorize what kind of person and what job Mr. Olsen is performing in the film. In the scene where Mr. Olson is riding in his limo with older gentlemen who begins to critique his recent performances, Mr. Olsen mentions ‘how the cameras are so small that you can’t even see them’ and possibly he feels a bet uninspired to perform. Moments like this one reflect on whatever these appointments actually are, in reference to the cameras it is apparent that these scenes are being watched by an audience that are within the film. Dialogue from this scene like “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and “what if there is no beholder” express that Mr. Olsen wants to accept his work but he may be having a hard time passionately performing because he doesn’t know who he is anymore.

Carax decision to slightly develop Mr. Olsen’s as a character with actions like pouring a cocktail in the limo and laughing with Celine make him out to be a pretty normal person but at the end Mr. Olsen going home to a family of chimpanzees contradicts this build up. We still don’t know if Mr. Olsen is ever not playing a role. It is hard to get over the obsession of what’s going on with Mr. Olsen. It’s hard to not analyze the individual appointments and how they relate or why they are significant to the film and society at large. The scenes Carax creates such as Merde draping his head over a glamorous model’s lap reminds me of Eugene Delacroix’s Le Vampire. Carax creates this ironic juxtaposition between Islamic culture and the Niqab and Merde thus creating a beautiful composition between the two conflicting images.

 

 After watching clips form Carax short films like Modern Love and Tokyo his style of directing seems to revolve around the use of climatic music, impactful brief dialogue, and creative visual images. I did see one clip from Modern Love, which looked very similar to the motion capture scene where Mr. Olsen is running against a virtual reality. Also the character Merde was appropriated from Tokyo, Carax readopting previous work for Holy Motors is cool to see come together as a cohesive body of work. Denis Lavant and Carax have been working together for 30 years this relationship strengthens how they work together. Evidently all the appointments were created to challenge Lavant as a performer envisioned by Carax. Lavant and Carax didn't know each other personally, just as artists, so he was always this mysterious figure to Carax who could embody any character thrown at him. I think Holy Motors was a testament to Lavant and his ability to perform and Carax's fascination for the art of capturing the scene.