One has to admit that The Holy Mountain is a whole lot better than El Topo. On the other hand, it could be a whole lot better than El Topo and still be pretty lousy. Such is the case.
I've never been able to figure out why anybody liked El Topo in the first place. I guess there's never any shortage of people ready to be sucked into a meaningless, self-indulgent circus of undigested surrealist imagery - especially if there are lots of tits, and a lavish helping of hype. After El Topo I swore that I'd never set foot in another theater where a Jodorowsky film was playing; none the less professional responsibility triumphed, and I went to see Holy Mountain. It wasn't nearly as excruciating, as El Topo, and, as much as I hate to admit it, I guess I'll go see his next one.
Who is this Jodorowsky dude anyway? Turns out he was born in Iqalque, a seaport town in northern Chile. He moved to Santiago for a while, where he got into theater and mime. Then he went to Paris where he worked with Marcel Marceau, Arrabal, and Topor (co-founding the "Panic" movement, whatever that is.) Then he went to Mexico, where he directed more than 100 plays (classical drama, as well as lonesco, Beckett, and Arrabal) for the National Theater in Mexico City. In fact, when we were in D. F. a year or so ago, there was a production of Moliere at the National Theater, directed by Jodorowsky; (I kinda wish I had gone to see it, now.) Anyway, El Topo was his second film, and Holy Mountain is his third.
So Jodorowsky comes by his surrealism honestly, The question is: what does he do with it? In El Topo, he grafted his Surrealist /Theater of Cruelty schtick onto a western movie plot that never quite took the overlay: In Holy Mountain he constructed a much more appropriate vehicle for his overkill symbolism: a classic tale of the search for enlightenment, vaguely inspired by Hesse's Journey to the East. A thief, the main character, joins forces with a group of powerful politicians and industrialists who storm the Holy Mountain and wrest the secret of eternal life from the Immortals who live there. The spiritual pilgrims are headed by an alchemist-guru, played with frail charm by Jodorowsky himself.
The sets and costumes are strikingly beautiful, showing a strong tantric art influence, and the photography (in TechniScope, as opposed to El Topo's 16mm) is quite gorgeous. All the classic surrealist techniques are called into play, like when a young woman is shot down by police, and doves fly out of the wound. But finally,'Holy Mountain' is all surface and very little meaning. The various industrialists, for instance, are depicted as very evil people- yet they are presented as holy seekers after enlightenment. The ending, intended to be a reverse-whammy Zen kicker, is so obvious you can see it coming miles away. Endless shots of naked women and simulated screwing have no shock value inan era of hard-core porno filcks. Finally one has to ask: What is this about? And the answer is: nothing.
In a singularly appropriate scene, the alchemist asks the thief if he would like some gold. When the thief answers affirmatively, the alchemist has him defecate into a glass retort, the contents of which are then processed to produce the precious metal. Unortunately, Jodorowsky-as-filmmaker is not nearly as successful at turning shit into gold.