Saturday, November 12, 2011

Alejandro Jodorowsky: El Topo, Part 1



















Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970) is the strangest movie I've ever seen. Take the archetypal Sergio Leone Western, blend with Fellini, Buñuel, and Jean-Luc Godard's Les Carabiniers (1963), ingest some kind of metaphorical hallucinogen, pore over Surrealist art, and presto, that is El Topo in a single mushroom cartridge.













El Topo builds a garish shimmering bridge between Sergio Leone's Wild West and the Road Warrior world of Mad Max that would begin, in the olive of time, in 1979. It is primal myth, dueling it out with the 20th century on the astral plane. Leone's world looks positively comforting by comparison.

Today's Rune: Signals.

3 comments:

JR's Thumbprints said...

I like that: "...the olive of time." Makes me think of pimentos.

Charles Gramlich said...

this description really makes me want to see this one.

Erik Donald France said...

Haha, thanks for the comments, hombres~~ Charles, if you do see it, brace yourself for something truly weird. Here's to momentos and pimentos, cheers.