Jodorowski's Box
By K.A. Laity
What can you say about a 25-year-old film that died? That it was beautiful and brilliant? That it was loved by John and Yoko, George Harrison and me? Okay, it’s really 35 (er, 37), but still looking youthful. But it did die—or rather, it was murdered. The corpse, however, refused to lie down and rot—instead it haunted our dreams and memories until it had sufficient power to be reborn, and gloriously so.
JODOROWSKY BOX SET (1975)
Abkco Films, $49.98
111 mins
It’s hard to believe that EL TOPO is the same vintage as that mouldering corpse LOVE STORY, the Oscar-winning weepy released just two days before Jodorowsky’s epic, which became the first midnight movie. It’s even harder to believe that one man could work so hard to keep it dead all these years: Allen B. Klein. You know him best from the Beatles and the Stones, the man who promised to get them all the cash the record companies were stealing from them, which he did—at first. Is there anyone who didn’t end up suing him for doing the same thing? Thanks to Jody Klein, though, the two buried the hatchet some thirty years later and produced this box set of most of Jodorowsky’s films (where, oh where is SANTA SANGRE?). Much as it grates to say so, thank you ABKCO. For too long, fans have had to rely on scratchy boots (which Jodorowsky himself condoned) and highly censored Japanese versions of the films. These restored versions look pristine, and the extras are copious.
The normal reaction to Jodorowsky’s films is a dazed “what the hell was that?” and rightly so. The commentary on EL TOPO opens with the director’s declaration, “I never meant to do something outrageous. I just wanted to express myself.” But outrageous is par for the course when you have a truly original outlook (unlike the secondhand clones who litter filmmaking today). Unlike in his earlier films, Jodorowsky did want to make something that a wide audience could understand—a Western. Yet he found it impossible to make a “normal” film, perhaps in part because his influences come from such disparate sources, everything from Zen Buddhism to South American Marian worship to Elvis (the model for El Topo’s leather look), but behind it all was a strong tradition of avant-garde art.
The Chilean-born artist first moved from theater to mime when he began to fear that the text was the real star and not himself. The movement to mime of course led him across the ocean to France, Marcel Marceau and the surrealists. The influence of people like Cocteau shows clearly in the mannered, ironic style in the symbolist short LA CRAVATE (1957), based on Thomas Mann’s Indian-themed allegory about the effect of mind on body (by way of severed heads). His second film, FANDO Y LIS, also shows the influence of this artistic heritage, but brings it back to his South American roots. Filmed in Mexico, FANDO Y LIS feels like a joint venture between Artaud, Cocteau and Goddard, with Fellini and Robbe-Grillet dropping by for a weekend’s shooting, all blessed by the Virgin Mary’s troubled second cousin.
FANDO Y LIS
Based on his memory of Fernando Arrabal’s play (what an audacious idea in itself) that his troupe had been performing, FANDO Y LIS is another symbolic narrative, but one that more overtly addresses the gender anxieties that would become so central to his work. Upon seeing it for the first time in 30 years, Jodorowsky announced it to be his most “pure” film, the ideas presented without regard to their effect on the audience. The premiere audience at the Acapulco Film Festival pelted the director with rocks while he made his escape, and the country later banned the film. Pure, indeed.
Told in successive cantos, FANDO Y LIS is the story of two dreamers in search of the mythic city of Tar where all will be well one day, if they can only find it. Lis’ useless legs will be cured and Fando will at last be happy, but the reality of struggling daily on the journey causes them to lose hope frequently. Along the way, temptations and distractions appear from the idle bourgeoisie seeking cheap amusements, the rapacious old women gambling for a young man’s sexual favors, as well as bowling ball-toting lesbians and spangly drag queens. Fando is alternately devoted to and impatient with the crippled Lis, loving her helplessness one moment and despising her clinging the next. The film resounds with the extraordinary images that eventually fill Jodorowsky’s films, from the burning piano to Lis’s flesh covered with Fando’s name to the director himself as the demented puppeteer cutting his puppet’s strings one by one.
It’s this ability to create resonant and devastating images that made the mystical El Topo such a hit. While a certain amount of credit can be given to the drug-fueled ambience of the midnight venues (Jodorowsky notes on the commentary track the omnipresence of marijuana smoke at screenings) for opening minds to the off-kilter narrative, it is the film itself that maintains its hold on so many imaginations, particularly musicians. Unlike his mentors who remained aloof from the jangly newcomers of the ‘50s and ‘60s, Jodorowsky embraced rock ‘n’ roll and the rockers in turn embraced him, like John and Yoko, whose endorsement gave him his first big fame; Peter Gabriel; and Marilyn Manson, who insisted Jodorowsky officiate at his own wedding in the character of THE HOLY MOUNTAIN’s alchemist.
EL TOPO uses the tropes of the western and its forebear, the samurai film, to spin the tale of a spiritual journey just behind the gunslinger’s quest for primacy. It’s a wonderful meditation on the effects of that era’s harsh masculinities, opening with the naked seven-year-old boy forced to bury his favorite toy and a picture of his mother because now he is a “man”—even more interesting because Jodorowksy himself plays El Topo and his son Brontis the child. On the wonderful commentary, he talks about having to make that up to son much later, for it was his very favorite teddy bear, but the act sets the tone for the film. Like Eastwood’s man with no name, El Topo is a gunslinger on a mission. He starts out looking for justice, but he continues in search of enlightenment.
The hardest aspect of this film for contemporary audiences will be the blood and guts. A funny thing to say in the era of torture porn, but in the pre-PETA era, it’s the animals whose carcasses litter the scene. The human violence is much less jarring in part because it’s more Technicolor and garishly unrealistic. Jodorowsky is careful to explain that the animals were all diseased and destined for the slaughterhouse, so their sacrifice becomes artistic rather than empty, but the sight of the twisted and mangled horses in the pools of blood at the start of the film will cause many a viewer to shudder (to say nothing of the endless rows of little bodies hanging from crosses in THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, although Jodorowsky mentions that these cadavers were borrowed from a restaurant and returned to be served as dinners later).
El Topo and a Bandit
After facing down the heartless (and peculiarly atypical) bandits who slaughtered every living thing in the village, El Topo is encouraged to face the great gun masters by Mara, the woman he rescued from the bandit’s leader. Jodorowsky reveals that he never knew the name of the woman playing this character, that he found her wandering in Mexico City on an acid trip. She disappeared after the filming, so her voice has been dubbed by another actor. Mara—and the mysterious woman who later joins them—portrays the destructive lure of the female, a spur to male action but insatiable in her ambitions because she cannot achieve them directly.
As the battles with the masters begin, Jodorowsky turns to a much repeated trope in his work, that of disfigured bodies. In the second half of the film the former gunslinger returns from his near-death experience in the guise of a ascetic monk. Riddled with bullets after his final battle, he finds himself rescued by a strange group of subterranean misfits, many of them dwarfs and most of them missing limbs. El Topo throws aside his egoistic ambition and decides to work to free his new friends from the prison cavern, for he sees that their outward monstrosity hides an inner beauty. In his new life, the former gunslinger and the tiny woman he comes to love work to raise funds in the nearby town, clowning and begging. While El Topo has taken up a new pacifist role, the world has not changed. Indeed, his actions in the first half of the film bear bitter fruit in the second.
If the mythic content provides a deep resonance in EL TOPO, it forms the center of THE HOLY MOUNTAIN. Jodorowsky explains on the commentary that this was his attempt as a young man to make a sacred film. Wrapped in his study of the tarot and other esoteric arts, THE HOLY MOUNTAIN is a stunning barrage of images that will burn your retinas and never leave your brain. There are unforgettable snapshots in EL TOPO and his other films—Jodorowsky has the most amazing visual composition sense—but THE HOLY MOUNTAIN presents a stream of them in the course of its cosmic play. The ritual initiation by the alchemist that opens the film demonstrates the stripping away of the unnecessary that he hopes to accomplish in the film. The stark black-and-white tile setting, the iconic figure of the alchemist and the ritualistic action (much of which was lifted directly from the Japanese tea ceremony) mesmerizes, lulling the eyes into the stark beauty of the scene as the two young acolytes are stripped of all illusion.
By way of transition, a montage of mandala-like images lay out the basics of the spiritual journey upon which we’re about to embark, but in a concentrated form. The abstract beauty of the images leave us entirely unprepared to be thrust into the riotous world of the thief, who acts as our Fool on this journey (cued by the tarot cards by his feet). From the pristine elevation of the alchemist’s world, we plunge into the filth of the material world. Jodorowsky might as well slap our faces with the images he throws in our eyes: the thief who lies comatose and drunken, pissing himself, his face covered in flies; the armless dwarf who awakens him; and the band of naked boys who drag him to a cross to stone him into consciousness. The riotous streets of the city show the gaudy existence the seeker must transcend. Fascists shoot students in the street, the aforementioned carcasses on crosses parade through the streets followed by wealthy followers on their knees in tuxes and evening gowns, and tourists take their pictures with the bodies of the slaughtered students or even with the soldiers as they rape them.
The Toad and Chameleon Circus—the name alone is all I should say. It has to be seen.
THE HOLY MOUNTAIN
The fool’s journey to enlightenment is—not surprisingly—a difficult one. Accompanying him on the alchemical process of turning excrement into gold are cohorts chosen to represent the planets of the zodiac, each lured by promises of power and control. Jodorowsky delights in developing over-the-top images to electrify the audience with wonder, amazement, revulsion—anything but indifference. While not all viewers will respond to the transformative journey at the heart of the film, THE HOLY MOUNTAIN is essential viewing for anyone interested in moviemaking for the sheer astonishment its indelible images produce. While its po-mo ending no longer has the shock it did in 1973, the final reveal still delights, and it works as the final piece of the narrative as well. Enlightenment, after all, is something one finds alone.
There are deleted scenes from the film with a commentary, as well as a short film on the tarot for novices, in addition to the delightful commentary and photo gallery. On FANDO Y LIS there is also the documentary, LA CONSTELLATION, which features interviews with Jodorowsky in his book-lined home, Marcel Marceau, Peter Gabriel and Moebius, the comics artist with whom Jodorowsky has worked on projects like L’INCAL, another tarot-rooted narrative undertaken when the director was booted from the film version of Frank Herbert’s DUNE (Google to find that story). The last part of the doco, where we see Jodorowsky’s psycho-magic healing techniques in action as he puts the camera operator on the spot, may appeal primarily to those with more esoteric interests, but it is part of the work that he seek to do in his films as well.
No film buff should be without this box that also includes the soundtracks to EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN. Jodorowsky is a singular visionary who brings indelible images to celluloid—and with luck, soon to digital ether, too. He has mentioned in recent interviews working on a gangster film with Marilyn Manson (as a 300-year-old pope) and Nick Nolte. Let’s hope the healing of this rift with Klein begins a new era of filmmaking from the master.
