Talking about the sci-fi setting of "Holy Car"

Wayne 2022-01-06 08:02:28

Text/caesarphoenix

movies are ubiquitous from birth to emergence to today, and different people always place different hopes and expectations on it. And these hopes and expectations are always influencing each other.
"Sacred Cars" certainly involves many fields, such as the reflection on the film industry, the alienation of people by the media, etc. Here I will only deduce its setting based on the science fiction elements.

1. The beginning of the film shows a "watching" movie scene with a strong sense of ritual. The movie has always been regarded as a daydream, and the image on the screen is the projection of the audience's dream, or the screen is the door to the dream. But in this film, dreams are no longer a metaphor. Movies no longer need to be imaged through the retina, but directly act on the visual center and cerebral cortex like dreams and memories. Close your eyes and indulge in it. This is the charm of future movies.
At the beginning (theatre), intermission, and at the end of the film, an old black-and-white image of a naked man (with jitters, white spots, and scratches) appeared. In the dream, the image is always vague and ambiguous, but it reaches the depths of the soul.

2. The protagonist of the film, Oscar, is a film actor. The production method in this film is to familiarize the actor with the script in the car every day and complete several tasks every day. The ten tasks in the film are nothing more than ten scenes. They may belong to the sub-scene workbenches of different movies (because the film turns to psychology, shooting is all automated, and the sub-shots may no longer be needed or completed by artificial intelligence).
The shooting of a movie is completely dismantled, and large studios (such as the Holy Car Store) can shoot countless movies at the same time. As long as the sub-scene worktable is written, each scene will be sent to the performance pipeline of assigned tasks. .
And the actors only need to meet in each task (scene), and they can almost pass one by one, who are extremely professional.
The details are as follows:
going out to greet the children is the end of the last scene yesterday, and the people on the roof are preparing for the scene to be performed here today.
The first scene of the day was in the car. It was a scene of receiving the phone call from the banker Serge, about eating at Fouquet.
(The scene called "Killing the Banker" by Celine belongs to the first scene. Oscar didn't have this task. The
second begging directly uses passers-by as extras (including real actors).
The third visual capture was to play with an actress.
The fourth scene of "Mad Man Dmitry" is a big scene, with female models, photographers, assistants who have been bitten by fingers, and many other people are actors.
The fifth father-daughter family love scene.
The sixth accordion carnival.
In the seventh Chinese factory murder scene, the other person is also an actor.
(Oscar only knows half of the script, maybe because the producer didn’t tell him he would be stabbed. After the producer talked to him, Oscar felt even more depressed, so he went to the set of the movie that belonged to the first scene and made a It’s not my own task) The
eighth hotel dying scene, about the ambiguous feelings between adoptive father and adopted daughter.
The ninth department store building (recalling the old) emotional music scene. What's special about this scene is that the two actors have known each other but haven't seen each other for many years. The characters in this scene have similar experiences. (The crew of the department store building is the staff of the crew)
And the actress in this scene is two consecutive performances, telling the story of the last day of the life of the character (the female stewardess) in the play, and after an encounter with an old lover, she and another person (Probably the current lover) fell to his death together.

The above nine scenes are the so-called nine missions. Celine gave the wages to Oscar before returning to "home" at midnight. But we will notice that Oscar also read a script marked 10 after the ninth game.

This shows that every day's rest has become the last performance task.
It shows that the entire group of actors has formed a new social structure and lifestyle, and a large number of fixed families (houses) are part of this boarding-style performance.
And the female orangutan and the baby orangutan are just a spectacle of this inner movie in this performance context.

(So ​​in fact, there are eleven performance scenes in the film, if you add the first one that walked out of the house, it would be twelve)

There are two questions here:
1. Where is the camera?
After the fifth scene, the producer arrived in the car. Oscar said that when he was young, the camera was taller than the human, and later became smaller than his head, and now it can only be used for nostalgia.
The molecular camera commonly used in science fiction may be able to explain it, but combined with the previous projection method that reaches the cerebral cortex, the camera is more likely to be directly in the brain, recording each movie scene by subjective viewpoint/subjective memory.
2. Why kill but not die?
Killing, killing a banker, and a female flight attendant jumping off a building with a man in a Chinese factory were all bloody scenes, but they all recovered in a flash and performed the next task.
What is the principle?
We have not seen any blood transfusion device, even if the medical treatment is greatly improved, it may not be explained.
At this time, combined with the initial director trapped in the cabin, the audience closed down and indulged, the producer said that I once thought I would die.
The general explanation that may be drawn is that the tank brain, cyberpunk, and the Matrix, but why so much makeup is so laborious, and the visual capture is of little significance.
If we still understand the world as physical reality, then they may have achieved nano-robot-level medical operations.
But the death of jumping from a building still makes Oscar so sad (the story is the last day of the flight attendant’s life), indicating that death may still be unavoidable, but it should be cloned and reborn (cloning ethics has been widely accepted), otherwise it will be difficult for big studios be able to stand.


3. The conversation of the car, the car does not reveal its artificial intelligence side until the end of the whole film.
And the demechanization mentioned in the conversation undoubtedly means another shift in technology, which will also have a fundamental impact on movies. The changes that technology has brought to life and movies are evidenced by the entire history of modern civilization and movie history.

PS: As for the female driver wearing a mask to leave, of course, it may be very meaningful, but it can also be simply understood as driving her, and she is also a part-time actor, wearing a mask in the parking lot is nothing more than a scene. This is also another emphasis on the unity of film and life, blending so hard to distinguish.

And in this world where everyone is an actor, whether the audience is still watching it is enough to be bothering and worrying. And there is a certain metaphysical meaning.

-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ The
film was re-watched in the archive on the evening of June 21, 2013, directed by Carax Also at the scene.
Due to subtitles and other reasons, after this rewatch, I found that the original division may be a bit wrong.
As someone pointed out in the reply, my purpose of this review is to logicalize the film and fill in the gaps in the film with reasonable inferences. The director may not think this way when shooting (but this film is quite accurate, and I believe it must be There is a holistic design), the explanation about the connotation of the film should be very rich.

About nine revisions of rendez-vous (the tenth is a rest task): the
first is a begging scene and the
second is a visual capture of violent pornography (parody of pornography, violence and contemporary digital technology in commercial movies)
. The third is the Madman Dmitry, the
fourth is the father-daughter family relationship, the
fifth is the accordion, the
sixth is the murder of the factory, the
seventh is the murder of the banker, the
eighth is the hotel’s deathbed, the
ninth is the reunion of the old lovers

because of the begging scene and the visual capture. There is clear information in the film that it is the first and second tasks, so the first call in the car should be just to pave the way for the movie killing the banker. Of course, whether the killing of the banker is the scheduled task or not is still quite controversial. .
But as long as the sudden request to stop and rush down to kill (with the red mesh mask at this time) are all regarded as the established part of the task, it is understandable. (The driver actually participated in the performance here, including the crash of the old lover's reunion scene later, also participated in the performance)
In addition, the banker killing scene, other people's slow-motion drawing of guns, etc. are all imitations of gunfighting routines, which can also be used as this It is the evidence of the task.

The accordion play is an intermission, which is sandwiched in the film and is not connected to other passages. However, considering that each task in the film is playing a game of confusing boundaries, it should be very appropriate to treat this long-shot passage as a task. .

In addition, the more controversial may be the reunion of the old lovers. I think this is a scene of "rethinking what we missed in the life of task", and it belongs to a movie about movies. (It’s started since the crash. It’s only thirty minutes, and twenty minutes to make up for twenty years are the lines in the film. Because this kind of acting life is already the norm, audiences in this world can understand the gaps in this task (And its sense of tragedy)
Music and space design, Oscar and the man who came up later are called women when their names are Zhen, which may also be a reminder.

Other tasks have obvious dress changes, which should be easier to identify. The father-daughter family relationship scene also talks about too many tasks, which may confuse the audience, but compared with the "old lovers reunion scene", you will find that this is a A world where everyone is doing tasks. Everyone is acting, and "task" is the norm in this world, and it is also a topic that movies in this world love to discuss.

The reason for not dying can be explained in simple terms with movie props and special effects (just like the real filming method of this film). The costumes of the two men in the workshop murder scene have bleeding devices, and the staggering coming out is just a performance. The corpse seen in the lover's reunion scene is nothing more than a prop, and the sad jump in the car is only the end of the scene.

PS: Director Karax said that he created a new world, and it takes a while to enter the new world, good luck.

View more about Holy Motors reviews

Extended Reading
  • Angelo 2022-01-06 08:02:28

    The latent text symbols are not systematically rigorous, presenting open, ambiguous and scattered traits, which provides the possibility of diversified interpretation. Preference angle: Even when we are acting, we still yearn for the natural background and escape the stifling of freedom and sensibility by urban laws, where the only way for affectionate interaction is collision. Coming home from work is the prelude to another social role-playing. We have never become the selves we want. Even if we start again, we are destined to be unable to change the end [8]

  • Rosella 2022-03-29 09:01:06

    Godard: "I wish Karax would be braver."

Holy Motors quotes

  • Angèle: I'll be punished?

    Mr. Oscar: Yes. Your punishment, my poor Angèle, is to be you. To have to live with yourself.

  • L'Homme à la tache de vin: What makes you carry on, Oscar?

    Mr. Oscar: What made me start, the beauty of the act.

    L'Homme à la tache de vin: Beauty? They say it's in the eye, the eye of the beholder.

    Mr. Oscar: And if there's no more beholder?