Following Jodorowsky's 1970 movie "El Topo", "Holy Mountain" presents more of the same: a post-modern reworking of reworking, a continually tangential relationship of story and aesthetics, a musing upon the nature of symbols religious, political, social, and economic, and a carnivalesque drama featuring dead or dying animals, freaks, tarot-cards, mysticism, and just about anything else he wants to shove in there for good measure. It's a lot more structured than "El Topo", but it's still the same idea... allow a character to travel through many different spiritual contexts to come to some ultimate understanding--wait, no ultimate understanding, and no ultimate "coming to", because as soon as it seems like the movie might actually be concluding, well, there's another whole continuation to take into account.
Once again I find myself caught up with my own desire to see more pretentious art-house style experimental movies and the inability to appreciate Jodorowsky's film. In this case, his "ah, but this is actually just a movie after all" ending, which fits perfectly with his post-modern intentions, is still an almost insulting let down to an audience that has been following this guy for TWO HOURS! To have the sum of all the individual parts add up to, "But this is just a movie and it can't answer the questions we have about the nature of the universe" is not only a let-down, but obnoxious... we know it's a movie, and frankly we're here to see what Jodorowsky thinks about it. Tellingly, he doesn't come to any conclusion at all... it's just a play of images and motifs, restructured symbols and deconstructed signs, with a few tongue-in-cheek flippant disregards for commercial value.
So sure. He can have his fun. But if I'm going to watch something that goes nowhere, I prefer it not actually go anywhere instead of literally leading me on a pilgrimage to do it.
--PolarisDiB
Once again I find myself caught up with my own desire to see more pretentious art-house style experimental movies and the inability to appreciate Jodorowsky's film. In this case, his "ah, but this is actually just a movie after all" ending, which fits perfectly with his post-modern intentions, is still an almost insulting let down to an audience that has been following this guy for TWO HOURS! To have the sum of all the individual parts add up to, "But this is just a movie and it can't answer the questions we have about the nature of the universe" is not only a let-down, but obnoxious... we know it's a movie, and frankly we're here to see what Jodorowsky thinks about it. Tellingly, he doesn't come to any conclusion at all... it's just a play of images and motifs, restructured symbols and deconstructed signs, with a few tongue-in-cheek flippant disregards for commercial value.
So sure. He can have his fun. But if I'm going to watch something that goes nowhere, I prefer it not actually go anywhere instead of literally leading me on a pilgrimage to do it.
--PolarisDiB