Mysterious

Holy motors was a strange film for me. Mr. Oscar, the main character at first seemed to be a legit businessman or politician at first, especially when he entered into a limousine in his business suit or talked about guns and security guards. However, I would be wrong and it was clearly a deception because he would then shift into various strange roles that had no connections with one another. First it was a lady that begs on the streets and next it was a virtual auditorium where he acted as something unusual and engaged in a sex scene with an actress, and so on. It was evident that character development is not really placed in focus as characters are static all throughout. For the case of Mr. Oscar, his motives and reasons for doing such acts is not really clear, as it only goes as far as saying that he does it for the “beauty of the act”. However, these acts may seem to even go over the line. In one scenario, he would bite off a finger of a lady, while acting as a really ugly man that wanted to wreck havoc. Things also got bloody when he acted as a gangster and stabbed a bald man that looked like him. In this scene, he also gets stabbed. The character of Eva Mendes also gives a strange feeling, as she does not react hysterically towards the actions of Me. Oscar, despite the chaos he brought. She also does not react violently when he bites her hair off, eats some bills, strips naked, or even licks her body. I found this scene quite disgusting, because even if he was really just acting for the “appointment”, I believe it was taken too far and no one was even watching anymore.

Because of his altering roles, his identity was never really clear and we only seem to know him as Mr. Oscar and he has a limousine and driver who brings him to his “appointments” which are located in different areas that require him to be in different roles. His limousine is also stashed with various costumes that allow him to fulfill his roles successfully. Another glimpse of his true identity came when he fetched his daughter from the party. As a father, he supported his daughter making friends and going dancing. However, he would be disappointed as his daughter did not engage with the people and hid in the bathroom instead, claiming that her friend Sonia is the one who had the attention of the boys. Furthermore, she believes she is also unattractive and manifests the same traits as her father. Mr. Oscar was disappointed and brought his daughter home as he continues to fulfill his remaining appointments. In some sense, I also get the feeling that Mr. Oscar is not in touch anymore with reality. Given that, he has performed various roles, it is possible that he is simply feeding an illusion that he is an actor. Overall, it was an odd film that wanted to showcase acting skills.

Holy F***

Pardon the frankness of the title, but that is precisely what I felt all-throughout Holy Motors’ two-hour runtime. From start to finish.

I honestly don’t even know where to begin with this film. But if I had to talk about it, it’s that it is an anthology film where the framing device is one man taking a limo from segment to segment and transforming himself along the way. And yet it is not an anthology since most anthology films have different collaborators and style in each segment, but this film manages to maintain a consistent tone and feel through all of these segments.

I guess since the film has this form of structure then it’s fair to say that like the film, this entry is less about understanding and explaining the film and more of reacting to it. Some of the segments that occur are morbidly funny (one where he transforms himself into a savage being with no control and an appetite for destruction and another one where he murders a man only to be stabbed himself), some of the segments are just plain weird (one where he puts on a motion capture suit and performs stunts for an unseen director and the ending where he goes home to a family of monkeys), and some are actually beautiful and touching (one where he is an old man on his deathbed, one where he breaks out into a trumpet orchestra, and one where he seemingly drops his character and meets with a woman played by Kylie Minogue).

After finishing the film, I was just looking around in disbelief with what I just watched. And yet, somehow, after a few days of the film marinating into my mind, I can somehow admit that the film was an enjoyable experience. It’s nothing I would want to go through again, but as a form of showing what cinema can do, you can really do no wrong with Holy Motors. This is a film about filmmaking in this class that shows its power and range as a medium much much better than The Five Obstructions, and it almost sends a message of how with film, you can truly do anything you want. Creativity has no bounds, so why should film?

confusion and curiosity

If last week’s film, Good Bye, Lenin!, was an example of how great films don’t need to be difficult to watch, then Holy Motors is its antithesis. Leos Caprax’s Holy Motors was, and I seem to keep saying this after almost every movie we’ve watch in this course, one of the weirdest films I have ever seen. This mainly came from the film’s difficulty to understand. I found myself feeling confused and even grossed out at some point, yet none of that stopped me from watching. It was a movie that knew just how to disturb its audience while still leaving them wondering what each scene meant and what will happen next.

Holy Motors follows a man named Oscar as he goes about what the audience can assume to be a day in his life as an “actor”. He has nine appointments for the day, which entails him to use an insane amount of make-up, props, and full-on identity and personality changes. As he goes through the appointments, they start getting weirder and weirder, from an old lady, to having simulated alien sex, to dismembering, to killing, and to even dying (but also, never actually dying).

Each story simply had no basis or end—they were kept unexplained, leaving the audience in the aforementioned confusion and curiosity. I was left with so many questions, was the scene with the “daughter” just another appointment? Or was it his real life breaking in between scenes? Why did Oscar kill that random guy in the café? Why did he never die amidst getting shot at multiple times? All of these, and more, led me to start second-guessing everything in the film. I started to construct my own theories and explanations that would try to remotely answer these queries, like maybe just like the actors of characters who die in scenes, the actors in this reality (like Oscar) are never harmed.

Acting and performance plays a main role in the film. Very simply, Holy Motors is about an actor acting without any cameras around. The whole story, especially that of Oscar’s, is a symbol for the crazy life that actors lead. It presents a case of how they can get lost in their own characters, they become their characters. Whether this is good or bad is answered by whether the viewer chooses to look at the film as a prime example of commitment or as a case in point of going crazy. The world in which these people live in shows how the lines between reality and entertainment are so blurred that only a select people seem to know what’s going on.

More than anything, this film presents performance as an art and as beauty. It’s intriguing and captivating, but you’ll never know what it’s truly about. Just when you think you start to understand, you’re faced with a new sequence that you’re left dumfounded with.

how far will you go?

Simply put, Good Bye, Lenin! was an easy-to-watch film, and for the first time in this class, something I would choose to re-watch over again. There was nothing particularly difficult about the film, as compared to our other films discussed in the class (*ahem* Persona) yet, Good Bye, Lenin! was a discreetly socially conscious film that was incredibly relevant to society. Despite the lack of a seemingly “difficult or bothering” plot, it still managed to be very successful due to its entertaining presentation of a harmonious balance between history, comedy, and familial ties.

Discussing this film’s historical context is a bit difficult for me, as I am not so well-informed on the happenings of socialism in East Germany, but anyone can tell that this movie was about a people’s love for their country. It’s obvious that Christiane was very dedicated to her country, but we can also see this same love in the actions of the family’s neighbors. These people, mostly older people who had lived most of their lives as socialists, seem to have enjoyed playing pretend for Christiane. You could almost see how they felt a bit sentimental over their times before the revolution. After doing some reading, I became familiar with a German term, ostalgie, which encapsulate the common theme of the movie as “nostalgia for a communist past”. Even Alex can be said to be a little nostalgic, as he really put a lot of effort onto recreating a communist life for his mother again.

However, Alex’s actions also show another great theme of the movie, of going to great lengths to protect your family. Alex literally changed the world for his mother, Christiane, even to the cost of his own happiness and comfort. I think that Alex was doing this all somewhat out of guilt for putting his mother in the hospital in the first place (because Christiane collapsed into a coma after seeing Alex being arrested at a anti-government rally). Because of this guilt, Alex’s efforts to revert his home back into its socialist state comforts not only his mom, but Alex himself. A less obvious act of love in the film is seen in the storyline of Christiane herself. She had given up a potentially more extravagant lifestyle outside East Berlin, as well as risking her relationship with her husband, just to protect her kids. A great contrast with Persona on the portrayal of motherhood.

Good Bye, Lenin! presented many questionable decisions, but overall, was a film about love and life. This film is a great example of how classic, great films don’t always need to be difficult to watch or so complex for the viewer, it can be simple, light, and even funny at times.

The Imperfect Human

The film, The Five Obstructions, is a battle of wits between the Danish director of the film, Lars von Trier, and his mentor, Jorgen Leth. At the start of the film, it was established that Jorgen Leth created a 12-minute film which he entitled, “The Perfect Human”. It goes on and on explaining what a perfect human looks and acts like. In “The Five Obstructions”, he calls on the 67-year-old Jorgen Leth and asks him to create a newer version of the film in five different ways. Lars von Trier will be giving him five obstructions which Jorgen Leth has to work his way around at in making the five versions.

It is simply odd and ironic to see humans watch and see how it is to be a perfect human, especially since we perfect is always deemed to be an impossible but feat. But, as we watch and look into “The Five Obstructions” we are given a sneak peek into the curtains of how unique and eye-catching the mind is and how it works. Within each obstruction between each film, they present a series of rules, that may seem different from each other, but begins to tell us deeper and more substantial messages. We begin to realize that these obstruction that von Trier has established, at the start, are not necessarily his own limitations and compositions of how he wants the films to look like. Instead, it becomes clear to us that the obstructions are always open to interpretation by Jorgen Leth himself, and he finds his way to surpass these obstructions. From the first obstruction with the 12 frames to the last obstruction, we definitely see how Jorgen Leth makes a masterpiece upon each masterpiece with so much. With just a few limitations dictated by von Trier, he dos an amazing job to think beyond the obstacles and still create a work of art despite the limitations. It just goes to show that life will always try to throw stuff at you, but it’s up to you whether to give up or to do something about it. Leth expressed his utmost creativity in all of his films.

It is not just a film that talks about the journey and process of making a film. It is not even about the tedious process of filmmaking. Instead, it manifests a basic truth about the idea of creating something that presents something autonomous. When we create something out of nothing, we realize and discover ourselves, and that it never poses as a difficulty nor a nuisance to us. The more work we put into our output, the more fixated and focused we become in our creations, and this is what results in a better and more substantial version of ourselves as individuals.

“The Five Obstructions” does not just talk about the perfect human. The five obstructions that are sewn into each film tell us that there is no perfect human. That we all have obstructions, we all have our own insecurities, limitations and impediments. And, this is what makes us human.

Holy Motors: “WTF” personified on the silver screen

Maaaaaaaaaannnn this is the weirdest movie I’ve ever seen, let me explain…

Okay, so the movie follows this guy, Oscar, and his driver, Celine, around Paris to various “appointments”. The appointments requires Oscar to take on various roles, that he’s given via a folder of the persona he will take on, and go around Paris in said persona. The first one being a female beggar, the next one has Oscar dawn a motion capture suit for a movie or a video game (it’s not explicitly stated what it’s for). The weirdest role (in my opinion) that Oscar has to play is some sort of a leprechaun. As the leprechaun, he is wearing many prosthetics to make his appearance more gross and repulsive. He then proceeds to run through a cemetery taking the flowers from the graves and eating them. BUT that’s not even the weirdest part, he then goes to a photoshoot, bites off an assistant’s finger and then kidnaps the model and brings her to the sewers of Paris. The model doesn’t say or do anything, but just goes with it, which confuses me just as much.

An interesting part of the film is the revelation that he is part of an agency that has other “actors” who take on different personas through their various “appointments”. This was seen when Oscar was talking with this lady who he knew in the past, but maybe as a different name when they were in an appointment together.

A Love of A Child

Compared to other films we’ve seen in class, Good Bye, Lenin! was probably a class favorite as no one really had to bothered, when it came to interpreting what was happening in the film. The film was much more comprehensible, which is probably attributed how recent the movie was filmed and produced.

Good Bye Lenin!, which was released in 2003, sets in 1989 East Berlin. Christiane, who is a single-mother of two and a loyal member of the Socialist Unity Party, enters a coma when she finds her son, Alex, getting arrested in a huge mass of protesters. During the period she was still in her coma, much changed in the country of Germany. The movie’s plot revolved around the real-life occurrence of the German Unification between the East and the West. As she was still unconscious, the film recreates the famous scene of the Berlin Wall was being taken down as a sign of the unification between the two sides of Germany. Much of the events of how East part of Berlin quickly allows and embraces the western culture to enter their borders were shown as the Christiane was still in her coma. You can see Ariane earning a job in the famous Burger King, you see how the border control slowly became much more lenient in each scene as compared to the last.

Like most movies that involve an important character getting into a fatal coma, they eventually have to wake up. When Christiane does get up from her coma, Alex and his sister, Ariane, were advised by doctors that their mother must avoid any form of shock as she could experience a fatal heart attack. Alex does everything he can to take his mother back home and hide everything that has happened while she was asleep. He removes everything in their home that would show any sign of the historic event. He would look for old jars of food in order for her to be able to recognize the food that she ate. He hired kids to sing old songs to her. He looked for old friends of the mother and had them talk to her like nothing happened in the past few years. He ambitiously filmed TV news through his friend to continue to convince his mom that nothing much has changed. Alex’s display of love for his mother was one that I could really relate to. If I had to go through the same thing, in order to save my mother’s life, I would do it without hesitation. Alex’s love for his mom is something I can really appreciate.

The film did a very good job in emphasizing moments and letting the audience understand. The use of effects, in terms of color and audio, made the film much easier to comprehend and appreciate. The use of color was most noticeable between the two periods. Before the Berlin Wall was taken down, you notice that color tones and the mood were much darker. When we start to see the city a little bit more liberated and westernized, it started to get much brighter and colorful, which I believe sets a much lighter mood for the audience. The use of sound effects was noticeable through the use of a powerful sound in the scene of when Christiane was finally able to see the reality of the situation in the streets of Berlin, as the helicopter was lifting the statue of Lenin.

Overall, the movie was one that I could really appreciate. Films that play around with “What if?” situations in actual historic events are ones that actually interest me. I look forward to more European films that will do the same thing and depict other famous historic events in Europe.

Web of lies and love

Out of all the movies we watched in class, Good Bye, Lenin! was the film I enjoyed the most (so far). It was funny and entertaining, and it also showcased familial values at the same time. The dilemma of the story was a choice between two goods — a moral dilemma — which made it more difficult for Alex to decide. He had to choose between his mom’s life and his own integrity — I understand why he chose the former!

In the film, Alex went through great lengths just to save his mother. He and Denis had to create fake broadcasts just to back up the web of lies that he created just so his mother would not go into shock. I found it noble yet frustrating at the same time. I honestly think that he could have saved himself and his family a whole lot of trouble if he just told his mom the truth at the start, or at least gradually. If that had happened to me, I think I would automatically choose to just come clean to my own mother, little by little. I would think that my mom would deserve to know the truth about the outside world. But then again, if Alex did not create the huge lie that their country was still under a communist regime, then there would have been no conflict, no plot, and of course, no movie.

Although I did not approve of the means, I did understand his end goal/purpose. He felt like it was the only way to keep his mother safe. I understood the love he had for his mom — it was evident. This fact was what I appreciated most in the film. I thought the film was going to be a political one; I was pleasantly surprised when the central theme of the movie was actually family. I also admired the fact that the characters were well-developed — it helped me empathize with the love they had for each other a little bit more. From start to finish, Alex’ persona was consistent. He was known as the quiet boy with a huge heart — a heart for what he values (which was shown when he fought against the government at the start of the film) and a heart that is filled with love for the woman who raised him (which was shown throughout the entire film as he lied to save her life). Christiane, his mom, was the traditional and conservative citizen whose beliefs opposed her son’s, but she knew in her heart that before being this type of person, she is a mother who loves her children. It was beautiful to witness her knowing about the lies Alex told to save her life and pretending she did not actually know. It was a simple scene, yet it showed to me how much she loved and appreciated the efforts of her family.

Good Bye, Lenin! was a unique way of telling the story of a son’s love for his mother. It was historical, comedic, and touching all at the same time.

Good Bye, Berlin Wall

The film “Good Bye, Lenin” is a controversial comedy on the political propaganda on Germany’s divided nation. East Germany’s socialist aspect as well as West Germany’s capitalist point of view.

I feel that it was admirable of the family to keep the secret of the reunification of Germany. Out of fear of losing their mother, they wildly kept the secret in such a messy comedic way.

What I liked most about the movie was the main theme of it was that it was an unconventional love story. When I say unconventional, I mean that the love story is more of a son’s love for his mother. And in this movie particularly it is needed most as the mother was going through a lot with her husband leaving her and her children and so she filled that emotional spot in her life with her love for her political party. And I find it so sweet of Alex to recognise that and maintain that image for his mother as long as he could.

Goodbye Lenin

Goodbye Lenin was by far my favorite among the films we took up. It had a comedic aspect even if the situation and setting was a serious matter. It also showed aspects that were relatable even if I don’t come from a broken family and have never experienced living in a socialist environment. The important values I saw in the film were love, sacrifice, sense of family and sense of nationality.

I think that it was already obvious from the start of the movie how the 2 children were really close to their mom. After their dad left, their mom was really all they had and I think they saw the hardships she had to go through to show a tough and stable front for them. So when Alex was in a rally and saw his mom collapse after seeing him with the opposite party, I think that moment really made him feel ashamed. Not because he didn’t believe in what he was fighting for but because he wanted to protect his mom at all costs. After his mom got into a coma, he wanted to be extra careful with protecting her feelings. So he staged everything even the details just to pretend that the Berlin wall had not yet fallen. It sounds crazy and absurd but everyone was in on it. I guess to a certain extent it became too much, the fine line between protecting and manipulating. But I think from Alex’s point of view, he didn’t feel like he had a choice. Despite the comedic aspects (I especially loved it when he Alex would shoot fake films and fake news of his friend to show to his mom), there was a lot of deeper themes presented. One of them was the absence of their father, they were happy as just the three of them but there’s a lot of pain and years of suffering that they try to hide between those smiling faces. Alex’s sister couldn’t even talk to her father after all those years even when he was right in front of her and Alex would have awkward and distant conversations with his father only for the sake of his mom. The father also moved on and had a new family. But despite all of this, Alex and his sister remain good people. I think that’s what I appreciated from them that they didn’t try to create trouble, they didn’t even latch out on their father, they tried to be better people. It’s inspiring to see people who come from troubled pasts and still remain strong and loving through out everything

This charade was going on for too long that of course eventually there would be a few slips. I think deep inside the mom knew or already had a sense of what was going on. She’s fragile and weak but she is far from dumb. I think that what Alex was doing to protect his mom was also what his mom was doing towards him. In the end, I knew that Alex’s mom knew what he did all this time. She didn’t say “hey why did you lie to me”, instead she let him be and I think was even grateful to have a son who cared and loved as much as he did.

For me, this film showed how love will really make us go the extra mile. It makes us realize that we would do anything to protect our family even if it may be wrong in the eyes of others. It shows us that there is no perfect way to love, we love in our own way, in the way we think is best. Moreover, this film emphasizes the life of people and families during this historical time. We usually focus on the events, the killings, the chaos of this time but here we see another side of the story which i find quite refreshing.