Hacker Cinema
Holy Motors
2012 · Film · 115 min
Directed by Leos Carax
We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, worker, family man.
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Thanks! Here's the full list: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 8½, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, All That Heaven Allows, Apocalypse Now, Ashes and Diamonds, A Woman Under the Influence, Barry Lyndon, Bicycle Thieves, Breathless, Casablanca, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Chinatown, Chinese Roulette, Citizen Kane, City Lights, City of Pirates, Contempt, Daisies, Damnation, Dishonored, Earth, Electra My Love, El Topo, Eraserhead, Eyes Wide Shut, Film Socialisme, Fitzcarraldo, Fuego en Castilla, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Holy Motors, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, In a Year with 13 Moons, India Song, Inland Empire, Irma Vep, Koyaanisqatsi, La Dolce Vita, La Jetée, Late Spring, L'Eau de la Seine, Le Voyage dans la Lune, Lolita, Los Olvidados, Lost Highway, Lucifer Rising, Man with a Movie Camera, Metropolis, Mirror, Mulholland Drive, Night Music, Ordet, Orpheus, Persona, Pickpocket, Playtime, Psycho, Rebecca, Rosemary's Baby, Rumble Fish, Scarface, Seven Samurai, Sherlock Jr., Singin' in the Rain, Stalker, Sunset Boulevard, Taste of Cherry, Taxi Driver, Testament of Orpheus, The 400 Blows, The Blood of a Poet, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Color of Pomegranates, The Green Ray, The Holy Mountain, The Isle, The Lady from Shanghai, The Night of the Hunter, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Seventh Seal, The Spirit of the Beehive, The Tales of Hoffmann, The Tree of Life, The Turin Horse, Time of the Gypsies, Tokyo Story, Touch of Evil, Trans-Europ-Express, Ugetsu, Un Chien Andalou, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Vampyr, Videodrome, Wavelength, Werckmeister Harmonies, Wild Strawberries, Moonlight Sonata, Stellar, The Haunted House Biased toward European art cinema, experimental work, and directors who broke conventional narrative rules.
This feels like Holy Motors. Wearing these will inevitably change the way the bearer or the person pointed at will behave. They'll start being actors in their actual lives. Weird blending of life and film...
I'm not an artist, but I have grown to appreciate art more and more. I think you learn to appreciate art the same way you learn to appreciate any other product.
The first step is to accept that some things just aren't your cup of tea, even if all the true fans love it. I don't like Holy Motors, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, and IPAs. Popularity is a signal, not an obligation.
The second and most important step is to learn how the sausage is made. It gives you a much greater appreciation for the final product. My recent interest in gardening completely changed my forest walks. It quite literally made me see the forest for the trees. Likewise, I learned to appreciate film by paying more attention to the camera work, the sound design, and the many other things that make great movies great. YouTube has many great video essays that will show you a lot more than meets the eye [0].
The third step is to understand the context behind a work of art. My favourite example is Guernica by Picasso [1]. Look at it, then listen to this [2] from 1:12:54 to 1:16:00, then look at it again. You will get a far different impression of that painting. If you grew up in the 90s, the sound of a computer modem probably elicits some sort of emotional response to you. It would seem weird if you robbed the phenomenon from its context. That's also true for art.
That, or date an art student for a few years.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-woNlmVcdjc
[1] https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernica
[2] https://soundcloud.com/james-hewston/blitz-logical-insanity
I also collect data, from the very high-brow critics in Cannes, and recently also Sundance for comparison.
https://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.com/
What is evident is that very often critics gather to champion objectively awful movies. Even for professional movie critics standards awful movies. Looks for example at the surprising success of this years "Carol" and "The Assassin" in Cannes and their disappointing acceptance in the real world. Well, "Carol" is one of those special needs cases, which still has some champions left over. And compare it to the exceptional Cannes movies this year: Dheepan, Umimachi Diary and Embrace of the Serpent. The critics didn't appreciate them and didn't see it coming. However the professional festival programmers and jury in the followup festivals saw it.
But the same happens almost every year. "ADIEU AU LANGAGE" (Godard) highest rated movie 2014, "HOLY MOTORS" (Leos Carax) 2012, "Le Havre" (Aki Kaurismaki) 2011, "FILM SOCIALISME" (Jean-Luc Godard) 2010. The jury votes are usually much better than the critics votes.
Comparing quality to quantity (advertising budget, imdb ratings) makes no sense at all.
I stepped out of my proverbial comfort zone and saw Holy Motors[1] at a film festival on the recommendation of a more film-literate friend.
I knew going into it that it tenuously had a plot (more of a theme) and that it would be extremely bizarre.
I haven't seen any David Lynch, but I hear it's quite similar. Holy Motors thoroughly entertained me, and I wasn't really upset at the lack of coherence. If anyone's looking for something a little out there, I can't recommend it enough.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Motors