Viva La Muerte

1971 movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: After some war and a little boy's father's arrest for Communist suspicions, the boy tries to make sense of everything and figure out his mother's role in daddy's tribulations.

This odd mix of dream logic and historical happenings has an El Topo texture (indeed, the main character is named Fando like another Jodorowsky character--Fando) but it doesn't quite match the drive and the otherworldly brilliance or spiritual depth. The weirdness comes at you in episodic waves, and after a while, it just collapses under the weight of a bunch of kind of repetitive but nevertheless shocking imagery. A cow is eviscerated quite poetically, about as erotic as I imagine the slaughtering of livestock can be. That scene, falling near the end of Viva La Muerte, manages to stand out as an exclamation point following a series of psychotic fantasy sequences and pseudo-psych shenanigans. The images might be memorable, but I had trouble really absorbing them and couldn't be sure if they really added up to much of anything. I did really like the artwork during the opening credits, surreal Boschian-inspired torture scenes drawn by Roland Topor, a guy who helped make Fantastic Planet, wrote the book that Polanski later made into The Tenant, and had a part in the Werner Herzog vampire movie. I liked the accompanying silly French folk song, too. This is probably worth watching for anybody with an interest in the cinematic ideals of Jodorowsky and his peeps. I've seen it twice now, but I won't be in a hurry to watch it a third time.