For this month’s next review for Genre Grandeur – Films that feature/take place in Desert areas here’s a review of El Topo (1970) by David of BluePrint: Review.
Thanks again to Paul of the People’s Movies for choosing this month’s Genre.
Next month’s genre has been chosen by David of BluePrint: Review and we will be reviewing our favorite Films featuring Swordfighting.
Please get me your submissions by the 25th of May by sending them to engarde@movierob.net
Try to think out of the box!
Let’s see what David thought of this movie:
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El Topo
Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Screenplay: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, José Legarreta
Country: Mexico
Running Time: 125 min
Year: 1970
According to his commentary on El Topo, Jodorowsky said he never meant to make something outrageous when developing the film. He wanted to make a western, a genre everyone would appreciate and understand, particularly after his previous film never found an audience in the US. But he himself states he was “unable to make a “normal” film”. Instead, he ended up with El Topo, a hallucinogenic acid-trip of a movie which would launch him as a cult icon.
The story goes that when Jodorowsky took the finished film to the major studios, they weren’t interested. It was too unusual for everyday audiences, so it looked like El Topo would swiftly disappear into obscurity like his last film. However, at a private screening in the Museum of Modern Art, Ben Barenholtz, owner of the Elgin Theater in New York, saw the film and was fascinated by it. He talked the film’s producer into letting him screen it at his venue.
This would have likely just been a one-off to make little difference to the film’s fortunes, but a stroke of luck came in the fact that John Lennon was hosting the cinema’s prior screening, of his own short films. Lennon had seen and loved El Topo, so he encouraged his audience to stay in the theatre to watch it after his films. Many did, and this hip, artistically-inclined crowd loved it. El Topo ended up screening at the Elgin regularly for a year, helping popularise the idea of the ‘midnight movie’ and became a much-loved cult classic.
The film stars Jodorowsky himself (purely because he couldn’t find a Mexican actor willing to do what was required for the role) as the titular black-clad gunfighter wandering the desert with his young son (played by his actual son, Brontis Jodorowsky). He comes across a village that has been massacred by bandits. He tracks down the bandits, led by an evil colonel (David Silva), and brings them to bloody justice at a monastery where they’re causing further chaos.
During this, he saves a beautiful woman, Marah (Mara Lorenzio), who wants to follow him. El Topo allows this but must abandon his son at the monastery. After heading off with Marah, she tells him she can only truly love him if he proves he is the greatest gunfighter in the land. To do this, he must defeat four great masters. These are markedly different, representing different spiritual philosophies, and El Topo is forced to use dirty tricks to defeat them.
However, he learns something from each of these masters and in the process of killing them, grows to hate himself. He lets himself be killed at the hands of Marah and her lesbian lover (a mysterious figure who is shown as an El Topo’s female alter ego) as he is disgusted with his life.
A group of deformed outcasts living in a nearby cave discover El Topo though and nurse him back to health. He is born again and changes his image to go along with this, becoming a man of peace whose new quest is to help the outcasts dig their way out of their cave and be reintroduced into society.
The closest semblance of society is, unfortunately, a town inhabited by cruel racists and run by a sadistic sheriff and a twisted cult. El Topo and his new companion, the dwarf Mujercita (Jacqueline Luis), travel into town to raise money to get dynamite to speed up the tunnel-digging and grow to wonder whether it’s worth introducing their friends to this place. During this time, an important part of El Topo’s past comes back to haunt him.
On the surface, El Topo is as bonkers as its ‘acid-western’ reputation suggests but, at a basic level, the film is simply about a man searching for himself. The lengthy mid-section consists of the four metaphysical gunfights that lead El Topo to enlightenment. Each master represents a different spiritual or philosophical belief and each gives El Topo a gift that will assist him later on in defeating the rest and finding himself. He evolves through these experiences, going from fighting for himself to helping a community through peaceful means. He believed he was fighting for justice to begin with but finally realises his actions were as violent and cruel as those he was against.
A lot more can be read into the film if you want though, on a scene-by-scene basis. There is a lot of religious symbolism and allegory, as well as comments on fatherhood and sexuality, to name but a few areas touched upon. Jodorowsky says he got inspiration from studying various philosophies and religions. Perhaps there are too many ideas thrown into the ring but it makes for a rich, thought-provoking experience and it never loses that central thematic drive of self-discovery.
Like Fando y Lis, El Topo is filled with striking imagery too. Taking inspiration from westerns and flipping them on their head with psychedelic fervour, Jodorowsky subverts the genre at every turn and fills the film with the spiritual and grotesque imagery he loves to explore in his work. It’s a real shock to the senses and it’s no wonder the film went down so well at midnight screenings back in the early 70s when psychotropic drugs were being experimented with by large portions of young people in the west.
There are some dated, budget-constrained elements that look a bit silly and the prevalence of homosexual villains as well as an ill-warranted rape scene are problematic in modern society. Jodorowsky, in his commentary, describes how his gay villains were an attempt to subvert expectations from the genre, which I can appreciate, though with several instances it seems more like he’s targeting homosexuals as being inherently evil. He’s more apologetic about the rape scene, claiming he has a very different attitude towards women now.
Dubious elements and rough edges aside, El Topo remains a visually stunning, trippily grotesque and utterly unique spin on the western genre. Delving into a wide variety of philosophies through its constant symbolism and allegory, it’s also a film that bears repeated viewings as you can find something different each time you see it.
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