Accordian Crimes

A story.

(Chapter) 1. A few months ago (while driving to the airport), a song came on the radio which I had never heard before.  It was a strangely compelling song, interesting rhythm and several breaks in the melody.  In some ways it was a bit hypnotizing.  Fortunately, the DJ came on right after the song to tell the Listener that Said Song was by a South African Band (aha, though this particular listener—hence the interesting rhythm—echoes of Graceland) named Kongos.  I filed that information away.

2. Post-trip, thanks to the Miracle of Spotify, I found Said Song.  (A Quest: Congo? nope; Congos? nope; Kongos? Aha!  OK, not exactly Search-for-the-Holy-Grail-type Quest.)  Song Title: “Come With Me Now.”  Listening to the song again convinced me that my initial impression was right.  A compelling song.  You can listen to it here.  (Ah, YouTube and Spotify: the ultimate tag team.)  (It’s OK, go ahead and listen to it now if you haven’t heard it.  I can wait. ) (Actually, if you have heard it before, you should still feel free to go listen to it again; I’ll wait for you too.)

3. Eagerly, I listened to the rest of this debut album by Kongos.  Sigh.  One other mildly decent song, a couple of other songs which barely rise to the level of filler, and the rest of the album is dreck.  Kongos has one song worth going out of your way to hear.  You heard it (see last chapter). 

4. A few days ago (on the way back from the airport (I have no idea if this airport motif is important, but I am including it here in case it is.  Determining important motifs is relevant in what follows)), I heard “Come With Me Now” again on the radio.  (Well, for completeness sake, I had heard it on the radio a few times in between chapters 1 and 4, but other radio appearances of Said Song are most definitely not relevant to the story.)  This time, the DJ came on again with a bit of a backstory to the song.  The song is a few years old; it was in some French movie nobody ever saw.  Then suddenly, this year, the album came out, the radio station discovered the song and started playing it.  Interesting; a French movie using a compelling South African song as part of the soundtrack.  I filed that information away.

5. Post-trip (technically yesterday morning), I recalled the information filed away in chapter 4.  I set out to discover said movie and the story therein.  An easy quest: Blessed be Wikipedia. The DJ did not exactly get the story right (ah, local DJs, not exactly the best of journalists), but lo and behold, there was a movie.  Holy Motors.  Odd name for a movie, but then again, most movies have odd names when you just see the name.  The Wikipedia entry even noted the song was in the trailer for the movie.  I filed that information away.

6. Technically, the information field away in chapter 5 was only in file for as long as it took for the YouTube (there you are again, dear YouTube) page to load.  The trailer is there.  You can see the trailer here.  Go ahead and watch it.  It is relevant to the rest of this story.  Think of this as a multimedia story.

7. For reasons that those of you who actually watched the trailer can imagine, I was now curious about the movie itself.  Enter Netflix.  They have it.  On demand.  Wow, thought  I, this is surely some sort of great Cosmic Plan to get me to watch Said Movie.  I put the movie in my Netflix Queue (which, I suppose, is just a technologically advanced means of filing information away).

8. Last night, I watched Holy Motors.  Here the story gets odd (instead, the patient Reader asks, of just mind-numbingly dull?).   I can say without qualification that I enjoyed Holy Motors.   I am not sure that I can say anything else about the movie without qualification. 

9. “Come With Me Now” is never played in the movie itself.  Just in the trailer.  Odd.

10.  Holy Motors is a story about…hmmm…a man and a car?  A man, a car, and the driver of the car?  An actor?  I’m not going to get anywhere starting this way.

11.  Holy Motors is an Art Film.  Hmmm.  Also a bad start.  Now no sensible person will want to watch the film.

12.  Holy Motors may have a plot.  If it exists, that plot may cohere.    However, it is most certainly not a plotless movie.  So either it has a plot or it exists in some weird limbo between plotted and plotless.  It may be realistic, but maybe not.  It is beautiful.  And compelling. 

13. Holy Motors may have a theme.  If you read reviews of the movie (after you watch it, please), you will be amused at movie reviewers trying to explain Said Theme.  They sound like Sophomores trying to impress Artsy people by using lots of Artsy Pseudophilosophical Words.

14. If Holy Motors has a theme, then it revolves around how the distinction between Reality and Film has evaporated.  Reality is now a Movie.  You just play a part in the movie of your life.  You are an actor.

15.  Shakespeare explored that theme four centuries before Holy Motors.  See As You Like It.

16. As I have mentioned before in this space, T.S. Eliot once said that poetry is best when it is vaguely understood.  Ever since I read that, I have enjoyed poetry immensely more than I did before.  Holy Motors is poetry; it achieves that perfect balance of being something which can only be vaguely understood.  It is not incomprehensible, but it also is not comprehensible.  It sits in some weird netherworld of being vaguely comprehensible. By design.  The design is apparent.  This is a crafted movie.

17. Will you like Holy Motors?  And, here is the problem of a blog—it depends on who You are.  (Ah, who you are is a theme in the movie!  “Who were we when we were who we were back then?”) 

18.  In a probably futile attempt to predict whether the Reader will enjoy Holy Motors, I offer the following.  You will like this movie if you like: Eraserhead, Ezra Pound (particularly the Cantos), Gravity’s Rainbow, Twin Peaks (hmmm...a stream of consciousness throws up Twin Peaks and Eraserhead, maybe this should just say David Lynch), Steppenwolf, The Rite of Spring, or Little House on the Prairie (the TV show).

19.  Just kidding about Little House on the Prairie.  If you like Little House, you’ll hate Holy Motors. 

20. A story with 19 chapters feels incomplete.  Twenty chapters feels complete.