El Topo

Alejandro Jodorowski is name that will come up if you spend enough time watching acclaimed cinema. Unfortunately he tends not to be quite as acclaimed as his contemporaries. This is probably due to his movies being phenomenally messed up. I was introduced to Jodorowski several years ago when some of his more famous movies got DVD releases after nearly 30 years of floating around art houses and midnight showings. These movies, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, have a fascinating history that's tightly tied to the popularity of The Beatles of all people. All that background is available on Wikipedia if you want to take the time to read it but this article is about my experience watching El Topo.

El Topo is a parable wrapped in a western taken with a heavy dose of psychedelics. The movie follows El Topo, "The Mole", who is played by Jodorowski himself. El Topo is a magnificent gunman who considers himself godlike. The movie starts with El Topo taking his son, who remains completely naked aside from a hat for the portion of the movie he is in, out into the desert to bury his first toy and his mother's mirror in a symbolic act of manhood. They find a massacred village and ride out to find the bandits who did it and get vengeance on behalf of the dead. The bandits act crazy to the point where their antics are a mix between goofy and perverted including a scene where three bandits challenge El Topo to a duel that starts when a small red balloon fully deflates and another where the bandits are torturing a group of monks by riding them around like horses and other demeaning/sexual acts. El Topo arrives and kills the bandits after which a woman who was with the monks forces El Topo to abandon his son with the monks so they can run off and be lovers in the desert.

The woman, Mara, eventually demands that he prove he is the best gun-slinger by killing 4 master gunmen. El Topo is challenged by the masters and by the fidelity of his lover but eventually defeats them all only to be stricken with remorse by what he's done before he is betrayed by his lover and left for dead.

The second part of the movie occurs many years later when El Topo returns to life or out of a coma. He is worshiped as an idol by a community of "freaks" who have been imprisoned in a mountain. El Topo realizes that his life has been lived selfishly so he endeavors to make amends by digging a tunnel to get the freaks out of their prison. To do this he must earn money by begging at a local town where the townsfolk live a dual life of religious fanaticism in public and incredible depravity in private. During this period El Topo is accompanied by a dwarf woman who becomes his close companion and eventually lover.

Meanwhile a mysterious monk appears in town and is revealed to be the son El Topo abandoned many years before. When they are reunited his son is furious and vows to kill El Topo but upon seeing the tunnel El Topo is digging, agrees to wait until after the tunnel is completed before killing him. El Topo's new found sense of charity softens his son's anger towards him but eventually he decides that he cannot wait any longer. El Topo is possessed by a holy power and finishes the tunnel almost immediately. The freaks, seeing their new freedom, make a run for the town where the townsfolk are waiting with guns. The freaks are all shot down El Topo must watch helpless. He is thrown into a rage and kills all the townsfolk before covering himself in oil and immolating himself like a Tibetan monk. El Topo's son, the dwarf girl and the son she bore him while he was killing the townsfolk ride off into the desert.

El Topo is hardly subtle but that doesn't mean it's easy. The story of downfall due to hubris and rebirth/redemption is easy to pick up on but almost everything that makes up the elements of that story are insane. The first gunman, for example, is aided by two men, one with no legs who rides on the shoulders of another with no arms. This is not special effects. It's actually an amputee stacked on the back of another amputee. The freaks who have been imprisoned are all dwarfs and people with various bone or muscle disorders. This movie should also have a warning on it that says 'many, many animals were killed in the production of this movie'. There's a scene involving one of the gun masters that involves probably 20 rabbits and several crows being killed, some on screen. Later the massive pile of dead rabbits and crows are set on fire resulting in a huge bon-fire. All the things you think couldn't be done in cinema because of concerns about offending certain parties are done in this film and done excessively.

If you're sensitive to things like this or naked 7 year olds or old ladies slutting all over their black adonis slave to get him shot for "trying to rape them" or sex scenes involving dwarfs or any number of other insane things then this most certainly isn't the movie for you. But El Topo is utterly unique in the world of cinema. This kind of movie will probably never be made again and while it might be easy to say that this uniqueness is all this movie has, it's not quite true. There's considerable skill to the way Jodorowski constructs his story and the magnitude of what is happening in this movie, and how it's presented, allows even the excessive overacting by all parties to fit in. El Topo is crazy. El Topo shouldn't exist. But I'm kind of glad it does.