El Topo (The Mole) (1970)

Now, a late holiday gift for everyone.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo.

This is my favorite film, this is probably the greatest film ever made, and it is more than likely this is perfection at its greatest. Nothing has, or ever will come to what this movie has done for world of cinema (at least in my eyes).

With this being said, I will try to sum up this movie into something worth reading.

Alejandro Jodorowsky, as you may have read about in my review of his mind-skewing epic "The Holy Mountain" is probably the most pretentious man to ever grace the film industry. Everything he shows you has multiple meanings, therefore creating something that can be viewed on more than one level (at least a thousand by my count). Every scene is a piece of art, the foreground, midground, and even the background are all parts conducted masterfully by his vision.

This movie however was not his trip to finding enlightenment (as was The Holy Mountain), but his showing of the power of life, death, love, hate, and showing how everything will eventually pass through all of these stages in life. No one is fully good nor fully bad, and Jordorowsky displays this brilliantly (Superman is a pervert in his eyes).

The symbolism is a lot more subtle in this movie, but this does not mean that everything is not representing something or another (from his relationship with his son, his hate for his father and two amputee's dressed like John Wayne), and this is what seperates Jordorowsky from all other directors. His attention to detail and true eye for finding beauty in everything (I mean everything) is why he is the greatest, because he is not afraid to show things (and people) who normally wouldn't get the praise or screentime he gives them (Passolini did this also, much more on the negative side of the social spectrum).

From the first shot of the horse riding through the desert to the final scene is a beautiful showing of a fall from grace and the redimption one can truly find in the end (like I said before, he shows that no one is truly good or truly bad, and, oddly enough, that everyone must realize that they have both a female and a male side).

Another one of the things that I respect him for is that he uses normal people instead of actors (everything from himself in the lead role to his son he has never seen. He even has a woman who took 500 tabs of acid and was triping the entire time of shooting). Once again, he uses people that normally wouldn't (at the time) be in a film, and this adds a whole different spectrum to his films, because most of the time these people are playing themselves (no one is acting gay or under the influence, they actually have those qualities). This is something that has died out in most of the film industry in these times (everyone claims to be an aspiring actor) and it is a true shame. Reality is what everyone is trying to produce and it can't happen if there are people pretending to be something their not.

Moving on to what you hear during this visual barrage;

One of Jordorowsky's claims is that the soundtrack (this being all of the audio in the film, from the music to the dialouge) is another level of art and it should be altered and changed. Nothing should be left normal and more often than not it is about as far from normal as you can get. You have a woman sounding like a young man and the sound of goats turned to 11 (if this joke does not land, i'm sorry for you) and this is just another reason why he is in a whole different league than everyone else.

Besides the film itself, I can't recommend the commentary more. Having him explain everything that is being seen just adds even more luster to his already blinding films (I do mean watch all of his films a few times and then watch it with the commentary track on).

This review is certainly not enough to muster up even a smidgen of what this movie is and what kind of impact it brings to the table. If you watch any movie that I review do yourself a favor and pick this one up and dedicate a few hours to soaking in what a true genius in every sense of the word has to offer.