The Holy Mountain (1973)
by Alejandro Jodorowsky
Review and Analysis by Carl Roberson Faust
The Holy Mountain is an avant-garde film from Mexican director, Alejandro Jodorowsky in the late surrealist era, and is a watershed film for the surrealist movement. It is impossible to write an ordinary review for this film, because it's content is far beyond the ordinary. Jodorowsky discards all rituals of normal storytelling, and takes the audience on a psychedelic trip that lacks the clarity and coherence of any other film. The entire production of this film is a story in and of itself: the project was funded and was supposed to be acted by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Before shooting, Jodorowsky himself spent a week without sleep, meditating under the direction of a Japanese Zen master, under the influence of LSD for the purpose of spiritual enlightenment. As well, the actors were given psychedelic mushrooms before filming a particularly mind-bending scene. The result is a strange, unnerving picture that demands second, third, fourth, and fifth viewings to fully appreciate its madness.
Though the film seems generally nonsensical, it's impossible not to recognize the social and historical commentary during certain scenes, even on a first viewing. In one short scene, a world-wide weapons
manufacturer demonstrates a number of firearms built into religious artifacts, such as a Christian cross, a statue of Buddha, and a Jewish menorah [pictured right], commenting on the destructive nature of organized religion. Earlier in the film, our protagonist, who looks exactly like Jesus Christ, eats the face off of a wax statue of himself and ties helium balloons to the deformed statue's arms, symbolically eating the body of Christ and offering himself up to heaven. When the protagonist meets the alchemist in the rainbow clock tower, he is promised gold. The protagonist then defecates into a container, which is boiled, mixed with his sweat, and cooled down to form a lump of gold. The alchemist states, "You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold," implying that a flawed individual, represented by the excrement, can blossom into
something wonderful with hard work, represented by the sweat. There are literally hundreds of acts of symbolism in this film, whether its presented offensively, intelligently, or illogically, and deserves extensive examination.
However, at certain points during the film, Jodorowsky abandons the pretense of surrealist symbolism and reveals his dadaist influences. At these points, the acts on screen lose all meaning, and their purpose being there is just to confuse and bewilder the viewer. When the protagonist first meets the alchemist in the rainbow room, he is accompanied by a naked black woman with a ludicrous amount of religious tattoos from a variety of different religions and doctrines on his right side, and an exotic camel on his left. Although some meaning may be taken from a scene like this, it is obvious that the director's intention was to make the audience gawk with confusion at the screen.
The Holy Mountain is, as stated by Rotten Tomatoes, "a product of its time." It is the perfect representation of the nonsensical, anti-religious, self-aware and self-ridiculing themes that were popular in surrealist and dadaist art during the mid '90s. It's historical significance stems from the era from which it sprouted, a time of surrealistic, dreamlike art that provides the viewer with an understanding of the author's mind as well as ridicules the viewer for attempting to find meaning. The Holy Mountain is, perhaps, the greatest thing to have been born from the surrealist era, and I look forward to viewing it for a sixth time.
