Alejandro Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain" is to film what Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" is to music. Completely brilliant, completely insane, completely surreal works of creative art. When people with vision are left to their own devices to do whatever they damn well please, the result is something that is so completely transgressive to established norms of filmmaking, that you are forced to take notice and experience it - at least once. It also makes the film really hard to review. People will either love it, or despise it. I fall in the former category.
The Holy Mountain has something of a plot - but what you see on screen is so abstract, so absurd, so hilarious, so disgusting and weird, and yet so full of things to say, the plot doesn't really matter all that much. The viewer is bombarded by a series of images that will smash your sensibilities and emotions all over the map. Like any good piece of art, it will present you with words and pictures, but it will not tell you how to make sense out of any of them - if there even is any sense to them. That exercise is left up to the viewer, and you will be challenged every step of the way up to the top of the Holy Mountain.
What is for certain though is that Alejandro will smash all your grand illusions by the end of the film.
As others have said, nothing can prepare you for this film.
The Holy Mountain has something of a plot - but what you see on screen is so abstract, so absurd, so hilarious, so disgusting and weird, and yet so full of things to say, the plot doesn't really matter all that much. The viewer is bombarded by a series of images that will smash your sensibilities and emotions all over the map. Like any good piece of art, it will present you with words and pictures, but it will not tell you how to make sense out of any of them - if there even is any sense to them. That exercise is left up to the viewer, and you will be challenged every step of the way up to the top of the Holy Mountain.
What is for certain though is that Alejandro will smash all your grand illusions by the end of the film.
As others have said, nothing can prepare you for this film.