The Dance of Reality

2013 movie memoir

Rating: 17/20 (Mark: 16/20)

Plot: An autobiographical coming-of-age romp through Alejandro Jodorowsky's childhood in Tocopilla, Chile. His childhood is more interesting than yours.

I didn't take notes because you really don't want to take your eyes off a Jodorowsky movie to blandly write something down with a pencil. Or even an ink pen. Thematically, it's nothing new at all with its umbrella theme of embracing the past and using it as fuel no matter how difficult or traumatic you remember it being. But the presentation? Well, nobody's quite like Alejandro Jodorowsky, and as the imagery and ideas bounced and popped off my brother's television, about 75% of me was overjoyed despite the gloomy mood I was in and 25% of myself was infinitely sad because for reasons that aren't clear to me, the world just wasn't allowed to have as many Alejandro Jodorowsky movies as it should have had. Maybe the world doesn't deserve it anyway. Regardless, that was 23 years (Cinematic Dark Ages) where there were no Jodorowsky movies, and there's nothing anybody can do to fix that.

The movie's a breath of fresh air, but it feels wrong to resort to a cliche here. Colors pop off the screen, and Jodorowsky mixes actual (I guess) events from his past with products of his imagination in a way that is just so refreshing. This thing just swims. Even when it drags, at least by its standards, it swims. It's magically realistic and very playful although the humor is often very dark and the darkness is often entirely humorless. Beyond just a look at the artist's childhood, this is more universally about mother/son and especially father/son relationships, the expectations involved with being a man, oppressive government regimes (although that's used more to shade the rest of the story), confronting ideologies, how our pasts definitely help shape our futures, and how our futures can strangely shape our pasts. Compared with Jodorowsky's other three masterpieces--Santa Sangre, The Holy Mountain, El Topo--I'd say this is easily more accessible even though some chapters in the story feel intensely personal. There's still some mysticism or spirituality that a lot of folks would have trouble connecting with, and some of the ideas and imagery just aren't the kinds of things that appeal to the masses. Unfortunately. But its themes are more universal and easier to grasp than Jodorowsky's other work, probably even that one with Peter O'Toole.

Everybody in the world with the surname Jodorowsky is in this movie, by the way. His son Brontis plays his father Jaime, and two other sons are also in there playing an anarchist and a crazed religious dude. And Alejandro himself plays the adult version of himself as this sort-of spiritual guide. I thought young Alejandro was played by a grandson or something, but it's not. It's a kid named Jeremias Herskovits, and this is his only acting performance. I liked him, but my brother didn't. He's probably right since I'm apparently a bad judge of child actors. (See my thoughts on Jake Lloyd and Tootie for examples.) I'm remembering a large cast for what felt like a grand production, but there aren't a lot of credited roles and, in a perfectly Jodorowskian fashion, the people who aren't really important to this story at all are all wearing expressionless masks.

Those masks are just one of the little touches that make this an experience that can only be described as Jodorowskian. (And yes, I'm aware that I've made up a stupid word and used it in two sentences in a row. What are you going to do about it?) The mother sings all of her lines operatically, a neat little quirk that helps her clash with the father character and feel like this artistic, poetic, and beautiful influence for the youngster. She's Pamela Flores, and you have to appreciate the performance, the kind of brave role you'd expect a woman in a Jodorowsky movie to take, one involving her full-figured nudity and a scene with a golden shower that could be in there for scientific reasons that I'm not smart enough to understand. There's a little person who's kind of like those people who dress up as the Statue of Liberty or Uncle Sam and stand outside tax places or wave "Cash for Gold" signs. This little guy's dressed as a devil at once point and waves around inflatable money. You also get the obligatory circus scene with a guy dressed as a bee and some colorful clowns and more amputees than I think Jodorowsky's ever used before. Feisty ones, too! And there's a Fellini-esque ending that is stunningly beautiful and really touching.

Funny, spiritual, inventive, dazzling, dark, challenging, rich, and artistic, this is probably what everybody who's seen Jodorowsky's early works would have hoped for but maybe not have expected from an 86-year-old director. I had been looking forward to this one for a long time and suspected that I was setting myself up for disappointment. The Dance of Reality did not disappoint at all which, at least in this case, is the highest praise I can give it.