Dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, Mexico, 1970, 125 mins, subtitles
Cast: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Mara Lorenzio, Jacqueline Luis
Review by Richard Mellor
It's hard to establish why April 2007 has been chosen as the time to re-issue Alejandro Jodorowsky's cult favourite – but El Topo’s triumphant return is no less welcome for the mystery. Whether it delights, outrages or merely flabbergasts, this 1970s underground super-hit remains utterly unique and equally provocative.
El Topo scarcely garnered a reaction when it first played a few of New York’s alternative cinemas. But the film's ultra-violent, allegorical and blazingly unorthodox re-creation of a western soon rendered it a piece of must-see art, one with huge appeal in an era fascinated with counterculture and festering post-war dissent.
The stark beauty of Jodorowsky's picture firmly endeared it to the Big Apple's bohemian crowd. Crucially championed by John Lennon, El Topo began the Midnight Movie tradition, where anti-social movies were shown at anti-social hours. The films of David Lynch, John Waters and other maverick movie-making auteurs are often referenced to back El Topo’s pioneering style.
That style is a fiercely visual, sensual one, placing the stress on sound, expression and, most of all, image, rather than dialogue. The plot is never as important as the metaphor and suggestion behind each scene, as the eponymous protagonist seeks to overcome every challenge laid on the sand in front of him.
Initially seen chartering his horse through featureless desert with only an umbrella and his naked son for company, the black-clad, righteous gunslinger (Jodorowsky the actor) soon turns villain, abandoning his son for a beautiful woman (Lorenzio). After he makes Godly claims, she goads him into taking on four Zen masters of gun-fighting eschewing qualities from patience to love, in order to prove his superiority.
Thanks to its focus on the establishment of this worldly order, and its stress on an all-powerful, enigmatic Father figure, El Topo has long been considered a very loose retelling of the Old Testament. Unsurprisingly it's second half echoes parts of the New Testament, as an older El Topo nobly helps a subterranean community to confront the sinful city dwellers living down the mountain.
In truth the similarities between film and bible are slight. Much more obvious are the allegories. For instance, in El Topo's second half, the city spumes with every human flaw imaginable – including the grotesque, as an ugly group of powdered, portly and aged women force a negro slave to service their slavering sex drives – while out in the desert or in his humble cave, El Topo is the definition of uncorrupted, attractive humanity.
Much of the acting is pantomime style, a throw to the mime tradition Jodorowsky knew well; actors seem to pick a value, from naivety to greed, and simply nail their performances to emphasising that one quality. But as El Topo, Jodorowsky is a real puzzle, combining real deviousness with total innocence on his twin quests.
It’s obvious El Topo will not have its previous seismic effect, nor so perfectly mirror the political concerns of the day, despite America’s still aggressive foreign policy and troubled urban areas. Neither is its visual splendour and peaceful ideal likely to chime with viewers' consciousness quite as it did for '70s souls prone to a little acid or LSD.
But Jodorowsky's film remains a classic thanks to its eloquence of tone, its brilliantly pure production and, most of all, its audacious, wondrous scope. And it remains a must-see.
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