Alejandro Jodorowsky explains his landmark 1970 film about sin, corruption and enlightenment in the desert.
Spanish-language cult classic El Topo is difficult to categorize because of its surreal quality, symbolism, horrific violence, and graphic depictions of corruption, perversion, cruelty, degradation, and deformity.
The Story of El Topo
In the surreal fantasy El Topo, (“The Mole” in Spanish) monsters of all forms reside in the desert. And yet, despite its absurdly grotesque quality, nearly every scene in the film is an artful juxtaposition of color, shape, and subject designed to produce an emotional response in viewers. Likewise, the music (which Jodorowsky explains in the bonus features) is a complicated mix that accentuates the action in each scene, often eliminating the need for dialogue.
The unenlightened man, El Topo, (Alejandro Jodorowsky) and his naked seven-year-old son, Hijo (Brontis Jodorowsky) wander without purpose after the boy’s mother dies. When El Topo finds a massacred town and a mission under siege (both by the same sadistic bandits), he seeks justice for the victims. When he saves a woman (Mara Lorenzio) at the mission, he simultaneously abandons his young son with the monks.
Under the woman’s influence, he undergoes a spiraling journey through the desert to kill four gun masters, each with his own philosophy of life. Before El Topo kills these masters (by cheating), he absorbs their wisdom. Eventually the woman betrays him and a critically wounded El Topo is rescued by a gang of indigent cripples. He emerges 20 years later with true enlightenment – but at what cost.
Father of the Midnight Movie
The 2006 on-camera interview and the director’s commentary for El Topo that come as bonus features on the DVD reveal that on the night of December 18, 1970, John Lennon and Yoko Ono introduced El Topo to the world, thus creating the midnight movie. After this initial introduction in New York, El Topo ran for a year there as the first ever midnight movie – a strange, surrealist cinematic vision with content and images so disturbing that mainstream audiences couldn’t stomach Jodorowsky’s particular form of artistic expression. Even now, some of these scenes (torture, castration, sexual degradation, rape, senseless murder) are difficult to watch.
Although critics initially panned the eccentric director and his underground film, audiences swarmed to see El Topo and it has been a cult classic ever since. In his commentary, Jodorowsky shares fascinating insights into the actors, the costumes, the set design, the music, the homosexuality, the violence, and the spirituality. Even at age 75 (when he recorded the commentary), the controversial filmmaker – a true artist to some and a sacrilegious madman to others – continues to stir up politically incorrect trouble with his no-holds-barred comments about sex, religion, drugs, commerce, art, and the physically challenged.
El Topo comes in a box set titled “The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky,” released in 2007 along with two of his other films, plus additional bonus features.
- El Topo
- Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky
- Movie Run Time: 124 minutes
- Rating: Not Rated (Contains strong sexual content and graphic violence)
- DVD Box Set Bonus Features: Fando Y Lis (feature-length film plus on-camera interview with Jodorowsky), The Holy Mountain (feature-length film plus on-camera interview with Jodorowsky). The set also includes soundtracks for El Topo and The Holy Mountain, La Cravate (Jodorowsky’s first short film) and La Constellation Jodorowsky (a 90-minute documentary on the life and art of the filmmaker). Subtitles in English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and French.
