EL TOPO
April 13th 2008 09:02
EL TOPO (1970)
Written and Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Mara Lorenzio, David Silva.
Here it is - the midnight movie to end all midnight movies.
El Topo (English: The Mole) takes the mythic-gunslinger elements of many great Westerns, binds them to religious parable and threads the whole narrative through with Jodorowsky’s trademark mordant humour and insanely abundant visual imagination.
It is a tale in three parts. In the first: El Topo, the black-clad gunslinger (played very effectively by the director), rides across the endless sands with a naked child, his protégé, in tow. They come upon a scene of horrific slaughter: corpses – both human and animal – litter the ground and the dirt is drowned in blood. El Topo learns from a trio of comically-depraved bandits that it was the work of The Colonel (a deviant with Napoleonic pretensions) and his band of men, all of whom are holed up at a Franciscan monastery where they spend their days engaging in monstrous acts and laughing like hyenas. El Topo takes his vengeance in a display of carnage that would make Peckinpah uncomfortable. Here El Topo is the shootist of American folklore writ large: the vigilante who seeks revenge, not for himself but for those who have been wronged. His task seems ordained, as though he is the smiting hand of God.
In the second part he abandons the child and takes up with a woman he saves from the clutches of the Colonel - he names her Mara (Mara Lorenzio). They drift through the deserts together. He fishes eggs out of the sand and with a prayer, and a round from his pistol makes water spring from stone. Mara tells him that she will only love him if he can prove that he is the finest gunslinger there is, and that the only way to do so is to kill four great masters who live within the desert. He assents to the task and so deviates from his duty, beginning his descent into despair and betrayal.
The third part of the tale finds him in a shrine within a vast network of caves – a place he has occupied for generations (yeah, he’s immortal). His skin and hair is bleached white from the darkness and he is attended by the tribe of cripples and freaks that inhabit the caverns. They believe that he has been sent to them as a saviour and that he will lead them back to the town from which they were driven many years earlier. Problem is, the town is a grotesque place (an acidic parody of America) where the citizens routinely indulge every vice and civil-rights offence they can conceive of while proving that their god loves them by playing Russian Roulette. However El Topo must redeem himself by becoming a clown and a beggar, even if it means facing the man his protégé has grown into.
As with all Jodorowsky films the visual imagery is the champion, and here we find a visual aesthetic pitched somewhere between Sergio Leone and Joel-Peter Witkin. A legless man rides on the back of a man with no arms. The body of a mystic is buried beneath a multitude of dead rabbits. A castrated man limps slowly across a stone circle. Men are dubbed with the voices of women. Women are dubbed with the voices of men or with the chirrupings of birds.
The imagery is markedly darker and more graphic than in The Holy Mountain and the humour too is bleaker. It is quite a disturbing film, awash in bright-red seventies blood and echoing with Leone-style reverbed gunshots. The ending is tragic and ugly, but coming as it does after such consistent hideousness, its impact is somewhat dulled.
All told El Topo is a masterpiece of surrealist cinema and the most memorable oat-opera that I have ever seen. It is filled with terrible beauty, savage humour and extraordinary imagination. It is however rather hard, grim work in places.
Written and Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Mara Lorenzio, David Silva.
Here it is - the midnight movie to end all midnight movies.
El Topo (English: The Mole) takes the mythic-gunslinger elements of many great Westerns, binds them to religious parable and threads the whole narrative through with Jodorowsky’s trademark mordant humour and insanely abundant visual imagination.
It is a tale in three parts. In the first: El Topo, the black-clad gunslinger (played very effectively by the director), rides across the endless sands with a naked child, his protégé, in tow. They come upon a scene of horrific slaughter: corpses – both human and animal – litter the ground and the dirt is drowned in blood. El Topo learns from a trio of comically-depraved bandits that it was the work of The Colonel (a deviant with Napoleonic pretensions) and his band of men, all of whom are holed up at a Franciscan monastery where they spend their days engaging in monstrous acts and laughing like hyenas. El Topo takes his vengeance in a display of carnage that would make Peckinpah uncomfortable. Here El Topo is the shootist of American folklore writ large: the vigilante who seeks revenge, not for himself but for those who have been wronged. His task seems ordained, as though he is the smiting hand of God.
In the second part he abandons the child and takes up with a woman he saves from the clutches of the Colonel - he names her Mara (Mara Lorenzio). They drift through the deserts together. He fishes eggs out of the sand and with a prayer, and a round from his pistol makes water spring from stone. Mara tells him that she will only love him if he can prove that he is the finest gunslinger there is, and that the only way to do so is to kill four great masters who live within the desert. He assents to the task and so deviates from his duty, beginning his descent into despair and betrayal.
The third part of the tale finds him in a shrine within a vast network of caves – a place he has occupied for generations (yeah, he’s immortal). His skin and hair is bleached white from the darkness and he is attended by the tribe of cripples and freaks that inhabit the caverns. They believe that he has been sent to them as a saviour and that he will lead them back to the town from which they were driven many years earlier. Problem is, the town is a grotesque place (an acidic parody of America) where the citizens routinely indulge every vice and civil-rights offence they can conceive of while proving that their god loves them by playing Russian Roulette. However El Topo must redeem himself by becoming a clown and a beggar, even if it means facing the man his protégé has grown into.
As with all Jodorowsky films the visual imagery is the champion, and here we find a visual aesthetic pitched somewhere between Sergio Leone and Joel-Peter Witkin. A legless man rides on the back of a man with no arms. The body of a mystic is buried beneath a multitude of dead rabbits. A castrated man limps slowly across a stone circle. Men are dubbed with the voices of women. Women are dubbed with the voices of men or with the chirrupings of birds.
The imagery is markedly darker and more graphic than in The Holy Mountain and the humour too is bleaker. It is quite a disturbing film, awash in bright-red seventies blood and echoing with Leone-style reverbed gunshots. The ending is tragic and ugly, but coming as it does after such consistent hideousness, its impact is somewhat dulled.
All told El Topo is a masterpiece of surrealist cinema and the most memorable oat-opera that I have ever seen. It is filled with terrible beauty, savage humour and extraordinary imagination. It is however rather hard, grim work in places.
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
After, people came in for a coffee, wide-eyed and speechless. I was jealous.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Extraordinary film.
Unrivalled director.
(but what's an oat-opera ...?)