El Topo

1970 surreal western

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Title character and his naked son ride into a town where everybody, including the animals, has been brutally murdered. He rides off to take eyes and teeth and meets a woman. He ditches his son and rides off with the woman into the desert. There, he kills 4 master gun men in order to prove his love. She leaves him for another woman after that. He dies, is taken into a cave by a bunch of deformed people, and is shaven. He makes it his responsibility to dig these people out of the cave to connect them with a town full of religious nuts. I guess that's why he's "the mole."


My favorite movies are those movies that are singular and visionary, movies that absolutely under no circumstances could have been made by any other director. Inland Empire is a good example actually. This is another one. The imagery is iconic. Religious allusions abound and the desert and old cowboy movie sets are beautiful and full of character. Profoundly violent--swinging corposes, a literal river of blood, a crucified lamb, a naked man stumbling to his suicide following castration, lots of dead bunnies. This seemingly has a lot to do with religion, both organized religion and spirituality, but the symbolism is thick and it's another film that requires multiple viewings. But whether or not there are answers or puzzle pieces that fit together doesn't even matter. Jodorowsky has created something that surely won't be enjoyed by many people but will be impossible to discard or forget.

Note: Alejandro Jodorowsky was actually a pupil of Marcel Marceau. No kidding. That mime is all over the place!

Here is Eye watching El Topo: