top of page
Search

Film Review: The Holy Mountain (1973)

Writer's picture: Bryan LoomisBryan Loomis

Author: Bryan Loomis


If you were to try to map this to a three act structure (which like, why even try) I think you’d have to say the first act ends about two thirds of the way through the movie’s runtime. It’s there that we get the details of the quest to the Holy Mountain to achieve immortality. That isn’t an attempt to put structure on a movie that seems so unclassifiable, but to illustrate that the joy of this movie is in establishing and world creation.


Jodorowsky paints his films in loose sketches that follow each other sequentially. They are bursts of ideas, visuals, and creative metaphors that all have some insight into how the world works. We see early in the film the destructive effects of religious and political power. We see the Thief enter the tower and encounter a way of living beyond just survival. We see portraits of people who have built wealth through exploitation. This movie has such joy in building out the world, that you really don’t feel the absence of a full establishment of the plot until so deep into the movie.


This movie has so many ideas that would be the very best idea in any other film. There’s an electronic love machine that must be, erm, “stimulated” properly to produce a love machine baby. The thief has a plaster cast of his body made by people dressed as centurions, and then dozens of plaster Jesuses are produced with the cast that the thief destroys. There’s the excrement that’s alchemically transformed into gold as a metaphor. Among the sojourners, there’s an architect that sells people coffins instead of houses for profit, a chief of police collecting testicles in jars, and a woman making war toys to train children to hate their eventual enemies. There’s incredible set design - particularly in the tower, where color is used so playfully, and a standout set of a room made to look like an eye from above.


This movie is so bonkers that a fourth wall break in the last scene barely even registers as a bold choice. It’s thematically important, though. At this point, he’s pinpointed with clarity the things holding us back - institutions, power, wealth, and smallmindedness. The alternatives presented are rather vague and tinged with mysticism, as well as an exhortation to the departing thief to “reach eternity through love”. But here at the end, it’s as if the ideas Jodorowsky has presented in the film are so strong and profound to him that he can't maintain the distance of a fictional film anymore, and must address us directly. And his final statement isn’t mystical or philosophical, but grounded.


Goodbye to the holy mountain.
Real life awaits us.

0 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Film Review: Sugarcane (2024)

Author: Bryan Loomis How do you approach subject matter like the systematic abuse and murder of natives at St. Joseph’s Mission...

Film Review: Sing Sing (2024)

Author: Bryan Loomis This is a story that deserves to be told with restraint and care, and Sing Sing delivers in that regard. The choice...

Film Review: Daughters (2024)

Author: Bryan Loomis A great documentary starts with a great subject - it’d be pretty hard to take this subject and make a film that...

Comments


© 2024 by Bryan and Hannah Loomis

bottom of page