Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973.
This film is the pinnacle of cinematic madness. I greatly admire Jodorowsky’s films and have seen Holy Mountain and El Topo (7.4/10) at least half a dozen times. While El Topo was a Gurdijeff, Sufi, Zen, Christ, inspired spaghetti western that worked really well. Holy Mountain was a jumbled mess of ‘cool’ images. It would not be surprising if Jardorowsky simply made the weirdest most excessive film ever, merely because he could. After the underground success of El Topo; John Lenon, Yoko Ono, and Allen Klein (the manager of the Beatles), helped finance Holy Mountain essentially giving Jardorowsky a blank check. While the film is intense and very interesting to watch, it is way too over the top. The plot slowly fades out as the movie progresses, instead of gradually building to a climax. In fact the first time I watched Holy Mountain, I thought that Jardorowsky ended the film simply because he ran out of money.
This film is the pinnacle of cinematic madness. I greatly admire Jodorowsky’s films and have seen Holy Mountain and El Topo (7.4/10) at least half a dozen times. While El Topo was a Gurdijeff, Sufi, Zen, Christ, inspired spaghetti western that worked really well. Holy Mountain was a jumbled mess of ‘cool’ images. It would not be surprising if Jardorowsky simply made the weirdest most excessive film ever, merely because he could. After the underground success of El Topo; John Lenon, Yoko Ono, and Allen Klein (the manager of the Beatles), helped finance Holy Mountain essentially giving Jardorowsky a blank check. While the film is intense and very interesting to watch, it is way too over the top. The plot slowly fades out as the movie progresses, instead of gradually building to a climax. In fact the first time I watched Holy Mountain, I thought that Jardorowsky ended the film simply because he ran out of money.
2 comments:
Don't you think that the film may have been about degression as opposed to progression. Think of the Christ molds at the beggining, and why they were destroyed by the mold-ie. Not to mention the Spanish Inquisition re-enactment.
The film degressed until it was a caricature of itself. The movie about something actually turned out to be just a movie.
Very interesting point! I never thought about the film in that light. It makes sense that after the cult success of El Topo and its ensuing ‘Midnight Madness’ fame, Jodorowsky felt inclined to outdo himself with Holy Mountain. As result the film had no real structure or narrative, its only purpose was to outshine it predecessor. Hence the film was little more then a series of beyond bizarre scenes, with the inevitable conclusion of it eventually becoming a caricature or parody of itself. Maybe Jodorowsky realizing that his film had digressed into some sort of ‘weird cinematic joke’, decided to get the first/last laugh with the final scene.
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