Holy Motors - "The director is very French." "That explains so dang much."

I'm having a lot of trouble with Holy Motors. I saw it last Thursday at NYFF, and I'm struggling with how to even process what I watched. There is a premise to Holy Motors, but there's a lot of goofiness, ambiguity, and little explanation of exactly what you're watching. The film really expects you to be okay with just riding along with Denis Lavant's Monsieur Oscar as he goes through his various appointments as a 'performer,' and while I was with it for most of the film, the second I was pulled out of it (by something which isn't the film's fault, I should note), it became a completely frustrating experience.

There are some hints as to what the film is "about"; it begins with Carax himself opening a hidden door to a theater, looking in on an full audience. The film is bookended by clips from the early days of film. Oscar's job seems to be sort of a performance artist actor, filling roles in other peoples' lives or characters that fill a purpose. He goes from appointment to appointment in a limo containing a plethora of wigs, outfits, and makeup that transform him into each person. Though we never find out exactly who or what he works for, we do meet Oscar's direct superior and a former colleague, and their conversation reveals that the performer profession is a dying breed, at least as he and Oscar know it. Times are changing for performers, and neither Oscar nor his superior like where they are going. There is a definite nostalgia for film and filmmaking of the past, as well as a disdain for digital and CGI, and the central focus of the film is all about identity and performance in everyday life. Lavant shows this off in full force, throwing himself into every role physically and emotionally.

Fortunately, the film isn't all nostalgia; the digital cinematography is dark, crisp, and stunning, and Oscar's appointments range from shocking to emotional to just plain funny. The most memorable role is also the hardest to explain; he plays some sort of graveyard troll-thing who gobbles random objects and terrorizes the public and a photo shoot, where the photographer is taken aback by his weirdness. The entire thing is bizarre, goofy, and fun, and it's easy to just go along with the madness. There are many other moments of absurdity, some which work better than others, but nothing tops Lavant's troll kidnapping a model while the photographer chases after him orgasmically screaming "Weird! Weird! Weird!" as he tries to snap pictures of the scene.

And while that weird is fun, there are other weird moments that don't seem to fit. The goofiness in that scene is perfect, but after a while it's harder and harder to just accept what's happening without any sort of explanation or theme in sight. Along with the troll there are also some chimps, talking cars, dopplegangers, and a double suicide that has no problem showing all the blood that comes from a skull smashed against the pavement. (That last one is what shook me out of Holy Motors' groove, which isn't the film's fault, but after that I think my brain was pretty much done with following anything.) The film is a puzzle, but it feels like you're missing a few crucial pieces and every once in a while you're interrupted and given either a good cookie or some salami that's in the shape of a puzzle piece. The cookie is nice, but what the hell are you supposed to do with the salami? Eat it? Put it in the puzzle? Find some bread and make a sandwich? Eat it with the cookie? By the end I was wondering just what the hell I was even watching.

Apparently Holy Motors is easier to understand if you know Carax's backstory and his filmography; I've read that a character in one of his earlier films is played by Oscar here, and one event may be related to a tragedy in his personal life, but in my opinion, that shouldn't be a requirement to understanding what's going on in front of you. References are well and good, but I shouldn't be expected to do homework in order to have the most basic understanding of what I just watched. Of course, I may be thinking about it too much; Holy Motors is, above all else, a surrealist film, and I've never been good with those. I'll be completely honest: they frustrate me and make me feel pretty dumb. Therefore I wouldn't say that Holy Motors is bad or disjointed or even significantly flawed, but it's definitely...challenging. Carax refuses to give any concrete answers both in the film and in interviews, which comes off as very..stereotypically artsy, I guess. I don't want to say that Holy Motors is the type of artsy French film that many people imagine when you mention you're going to see a French film since that carries an annoyingly negative connotation...but the title of this post is there for a reason. (It's part of a text conversation between me and a friend right after the film.) When I left the theater, I don't think I knew much more about the film than I did going in, if that's even possible, and explaining it to anybody seems impossible. It's probably a great example of an "art film," and I'm not entirely sure if I mean that as a compliment or not.

Berberian Sound Studio

In what little I could verbalize about The Master, I spent most of it gushing about the amazing cinematography. Similarly, what is really mindblowing about Berberian Sound Studio is the sound, and how the film shows off the craft of making such a rich soundscape. The story follows Gilderoy, a sound engineer hired for an Italian film called "The Equestrian Vortex". Unfortunately, when he arrives, he finds out that the film has nothing to do with horses; The Equestrian Vortex is a graphically violent horror film which the director is convinced is nothing short of brilliance. Out of his element and working with a hostile producer and a director who considers the brutal violence to be art, he begins to lose himself in the process of bringing these sounds to life.

All we see of the film is the opening credits (taking place of a credit sequence for the actual film), but the real way we get the feel of Equestrian Vortex is by descriptions of certain scenes and the rich, disturbing, and at times nauseating soundscape that Gilderoy creates for them. Berberian Sound Studio truly shows how sound brings a film to life; Gilderoy creates crisp, descriptive sounds from fruits, vegetables, bubbling soup, sizzling oil, and aggressive ambient sound from a plethora of intimidating machines. The latter reminds me of the ambient sound from Eraserhead; it creates a cold, unsettling world both in Equestrian Vortex and the actual film, to the point where it can be nauseating.

Sound is also closely linked with violence; Equestrian Vortex is meant to be an homage to giallo films of the 70s (although in the Q&A I was at, director Peter Strickland noted that it's really closer to gothic horror than the giallo genre), which often had grisly murders, stylish camerawork, and unique soundtracks. Berberian Sound Studio could be seen as a celebration of the genre's soundtrack as well as a critique on the violence, particularly against women. Equestrian Vortex describes a variety of violence against witches and its two female protagonists, and Gilderoy spends a lot of time listening to them shriek over and over again while being belittled by the producer. While we don't see any of the violence that is filmed, we are forced to watch and listen to stabbing of vegetables, smashing of fruits, ripping of stems, and sizzling oil in lieu of murder and torture as the director tells Gilderoy that he is making art, not a horror film. Seeing the fruits and vegetables instead of the actual imagery circumvents any desensitization to onscreen violence, allowing the imagination of the viewer to put the sounds together with the descriptions of the scene.

There isn't a clear plot in Berberian Sound Studio; it is mostly about Gilderoy succumbing to the atmosphere of the sounds he has created and the hostile work environment  This works perfectly for the first two thirds of the film, but the last third slips into something which is honestly hard to describe. Gilderoy 's descent into madness comes to a head, but then there's still around half an hour that's incredibly unclear. It's obviously a 'left up to interpretation' sort of thing, but it's hard to figure out what's real enough to interpret. It's much less "ambiguous" than just plain vague, and while it's interesting to experience it, there's no real fulfillment when the credits come up. The first two acts are strong enough to make it still worth watching, but the end is a glaring flaw.