Jodorowsky - El Topo (1970)

Classic Americana and avant-garde European cinema sensibilities meet Zen Buddhism and the Bible as master gunfighter and cosmic mystic El Topo (played by writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky) must defeat his four sharp-shooting rivals on an ever-increasingly bizarre path to allegorical self-enlightenment and surreal resurrection.




"The mole digs tunnels under the earth, looking for the sun. Sometimes, he gets to the surface. When he sees the sun, he is blinded."





This violent and allegorical Mexican western attracted a cult following in its day. It is the story of El Topo, a gunslinger who sets out for revenge against the outlaws who slew his wife. He ends up getting his revenge and saving the life of a woman who is being terrorized by bandits. She leads El Topo (which means "the Mole" in English) on a search for the region's top four gunfighters. But before they set off, Topo leaves his young son in a monastery. He and the woman hook up with another female and begin their search. During one battle, El Topo is wounded and the women leave him to die. His comatose body is found by a strange group of cave dwelling people who take him to their subterranean home. He does not wake up for many years. When he does, he is enlisted to help the clan dig an escape tunnel. Later they come to a tiny town where the residents belong to a weird religious cult and El Topo's son has become a monk. The townsfolk are terrorized by a sadistic sheriff. When the clan members come into the town, the stage is set for a blood-soaked tragedy. AMG





Virtually out of circulation from the mid-1970s into the 1990s, performance artist/provocateur Alejandro Jodorowsky's second film El Topo claims a place in film history as the first "midnight movie." Determined to bypass traditional distribution after his experience with his first film Fando and Lis (1968), Jodorowsky sought another route for his surreal western. Described by critics as Sergio Leone crossed with Luis Buñuel, Sam Peckinpah, and Jean-Luc Godard, and infused with eastern and western religious iconography, El Topo premiered at New York's Elgin Theater at midnight in December 1970 and began playing at the witching hour every evening. With almost no publicity, El Topo quickly became a cult sensation, as Jodorowsky's trippy, ultra-violent screen quest for "sainthood" deeply appealed to the Elgin's hipster, counterculture crowd (especially since the management tolerated pot-smoking). Picked up for distribution six months into its Elgin run on the recommendation of fan John Lennon, El Topo divided critics over whether it was a timely avant-garde masterpiece or reactionary faux art pandering to its acolytes' worst impulses. Regardless, El Topo all but vanished by 1975 in the wake of the distributor's stipulation that it play only with Jodorowsky's less-admired Holy Mountain (1973), with its rare screenings raising the question of whether El Topo could have succeeded outside of its cultural moment. AMG











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