126. El Topo

Song - A Horse with No Name (America)

Movie: El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)

A combination of mysticism, lyrical abstractism and sadism is the fastest way to alienate me as a viewer. Especially if that combination is in the service of a cynically misanthropic worldview the filmmaker can feel smug about. So I did not care much for this film which treats killing one rabbit in the head, and other one in the heart as some sort of grand philosophical insight. I get to some extent though why it's has become something of a cult film. If this kind of thing appeals to you, Jodorowsky cannot be accused of half-assing it. I even thought the first 15 minutes were a kind of impressive depiction of  a fully primitive world in which primal animalistic instincts are the only currency. Here only killing, fucking and debasing others matters. The screeching sounds of animals and the creaking sounds of nooses are heard extra loud on the soundtrack.

After those 15 minutes of starkly realized nihilism a kind of ridiculous plot kicks in, in which our mystical cowboy, El Topo, has to find some masters of some sort and kill them for some reason. It's all kind of pulpy - one master is guarded by a man with no legs and a men with no arms -  but Jodorowsky (who also plays the cowboy) treats it as if he is retelling the New Testament. During this quest he goes on all kinds of philosophical asides which are meant to sound as grand and insightful musings of a tortured soul, but mostly are just silly and meaningless. All of this is interspersed with scenes in which El Topo is fighting, and then making up, with the woman accompanying him. She is abused a lot, but keeps supporting him, which leads to one of the least aesthetically pleasant sex scenes I've ever seen, involving heavy close ups of sand in places where you don't want to see heavy close ups of sand. That's another thing you get tired of by the way, the endlessly boring desert landscapes, whose only role seems to be to emphasize the bleakness and ugliness of the world.

And then suddenly, with about an hour in the film still to go, El Topo is killed and we cut to a story in which he is resurrected as a God who, with the help of a human woman, tries to lead her people out of a cave to which they have been banished. Now, this story is much more interesting and entertaining, but it also cemented further my view that Jodorowsky is kind of boringly smug and callous. The town from which the people are banished is one where (black) slaves are being held, bought and sold, and forced to perform all kinds of debasing stuff. The scenes in which they are shown to do that are the breeziest and have the lightest touch in the whole film. It's one of the most trivializing depiction of slavery I've ever seen. The first half of the film, in which pulpy, actually trivial, stuff was treated with pretentious reverence, only makes this more jarring. Depiction is (clearly here) not endorsement, but that's also part of the problem. Ironically detached cynical racism, nihilism and misanthropy is much duller than the real deal, and not necessarily preferable.