183. The Holy Mountain

Song - The Fool on the Hill (The Beatles)

Movie: The Holy Mountain - La montaña sagrada (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973)

The favorite topics of Dutch authors are sex and religion, with a dash of World War 2 trauma. The most notorious example of this is probably Gerard Reve, who in one of the most famous passages in Dutch literature, describes a man having sex with God, who has taken on the form of a donkey. Based on The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky may well be the best suited director to adapt Reve. He gets halfway there when depicting a potential God-like figure imagining having sex with a cow.  It turns out it's not particularly erotic. 

The Holy Mountain presents itself as a great visionary work, whose obsession with Tarot cards, New Age mysticism and spiritual envirionmentalism potentially contains the key to all the mysteries of the universe. Its main protagonist is a Jesus-like figure who in his search for immoratlity meets a man known as the Alchemist, played by Jodorowsky himself. The Alchemist teaches the Jesus-figure how to turn his shit into gold in a sequence that depicts this process as a holy ritual of great spiritual importance. This is not even one the five most ridiculous sequences in the film. How about using real toads and lizards, fully dressed in traditional clothes, to depict the colonisation of the Aztecs by the Spaniards? The 'colonising' animals are brought to the 'battlefield' by a man wearing Nazi symbols, while a German war song is playing on the soundtrack. This mishmash of history continues in the next scnee where we see people dressed like Roman aristocrats sell Christian crosses, while American photojournalists harass Mexican women in the midst of what looks like a junta uprising. In another scene the Jesus-like figure takes on a Buddha pose. 

I think that a lot of this is hot air, but Jodorowsky goes to such great lengths to convince you of some greater meaning that he produces some truly astonishing and unique images and juxtapositions. The film at times plays as a colorful surrealist version of Mel Brooks' History of the World and I liked it way more than the deeply annoying El Topo. John Lennon had a different opinion of that film, and is one of the main reasons The Holy Mountain got made. It's co-produced by Allen Klein, the former manager of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and this influence is clearly visible here. Aside from the progressive rock riffs on the soundtrack, and the psychedelic guitar weapons, the film has a proudly anti-authoritarian point of view that comes through even when Jodorowsky embraces his most obfuscating tendencies. Sometimes that leads to on-the-nose satire such as the sequence showing how an unidentified country is producing anti-Peruvian toys and comics to brainwash children into war with Peru. But it sometimes also leads to great dark comedy that hits its targets with stunning precision. The president's financial advisor's story is worth showing to anyone mindlessly venerating the Nate Silvers of the world, but the film's absolute highlight is the architect's presentation, a pitch-perfect parody of puffed up Silicon Valley product reveals.