2012

Director: Leos Carax

Genre: Fantasy Drama

All the world’s a stage, all the men and women merely players.

This is true, isn’t it? We act every day of our lives. All our greetings are already written. Hello, good morning, how are you. When we meet family, friends, or strangers we are reciting lines from our personal scripts.

Throughout each day we all play different characters. The worker. The colleague. The friend. The walker on the street. The driver in the car. The person coming home and eating a meal. The sleeper.

I did not trick you into clicking on this review of Holy Motors. It’s a movie you’ve been watching your whole life. You just didn’t know it yet.

Holy Motors is the story of one man living in a surrealistic future. He is an actor. We watch him play multiple characters throughout his day, escorted around the city by his limo driver.

He becomes an old woman begging on the street. A disturbed man that kidnaps Eva Mendes in a cemetery. A disappointed father. An old man who dies in his bed. A husband to an ape living in an apartment.

There’s a very uniquely hypnotic quality to this movie as we watch this man move through his day. We want to know where he will go next and what he will do. We want to know more about this world, where everyone plays characters.

In between moments where he plays characters, there is talk of acting becoming irrelevant. Of longing for the old days. There is discussion between two actors about who they really are. And yet there is a strong sense that all of this is not real, and just another hidden stage.

And yet, through all its multiple levels of falsities, there is something very real about this movie. Even though the characters know this is all an act, such as when he is an old man dying on his bed and his fake daughter is crying over him, they still put an enormous amount of effort into it. And that’s what actors do. Good ones at least. They put a part of themselves into the role.

And that makes it real.

In all the movies that brought you to this review, there is at least one real moment in each of them.

A motion capture performer from Avatar. A moment of fear in Taken. A realistic death in Hitman: Agent 47. A feeling of regret in No Country for Old Men. A touching moment with a CGI monkey in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

These real moments are what actors provide to the world. It’s why we want to watch them. We want to see reality.

Not to say that these movies are good or bad. This isn’t a review of them. This is a review of a movie that encapsulates all of them, and many more.

Holy Motors is one of the most unique and mesmerizing movies ever. It’s funny, it’s strange, it’s haunting, it’s beautiful, it’s sad, and it’s fascinating.

Also, it ends with a talking car.

Seek this out. I know you can find it. You absolutely should. It’s worth it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️