Something Else: El Topo

Random thoughts of random lengths on random films. 

Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky 
Written by Alejandro Jodorowsky
Starring Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo)
Cinematography by Rafael Corkidi
Edited by Federico Landeros
Released in 1970

How weird is it that Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1970 acid western is just out there in the open for everyone to see? First screened in New York, the film was deliberately shown late at night to signify that it was a strange, wild event, starting the midnight movie phenomenon. Due to the support of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the movie was distributed by the manager of The Beatles, Allen Klein. After a run in the US, disputes between Jodorowsky and  Klein kept the film from additional runs and prevented a home video release until 2007. After its initial release, the film gained a special aura due to its unavailability and cult nature. If you wanted to see it you either had to be extremely lucky and pray for an arthouse screening, or hunt methodically for a bootleg. Between hearing about the film and actually watching it, you would hear whispers about its content, and build the film up to mythic proportions. The fact that it was only available through bootlegs gave it an illicit quality, like it was something that shouldn't exist and shouldn't be watched. While it's great that the film is easily available now, there is a little extra quality to it that is lost when the time between learning about the film and owning it is nonexistent.

It has been commonly acknowledged that elements of El Topo are taken from the bible (the chapters are given names like Genesis, Psalms, and Apocalypse). In addition, the film is broken into two parts, taking inspiration from Jesus's death and resurrection (stigmata appear on El Topo's hands and feet when he is shot to death) and the Old Testament/New Testament split. To analyze the religious elements of El Topo further though is to court madness. Ingrained biblical images are littered through out the film. The bee's that made a hive in the corpse of a lion killed by Sampson appear (the lion also shows up), water springs from a rock in the desert like when Moses and his followers were about to die from dehydration, and El Topo and Mara try to become the Adam and Eve of a wasteland. However, the context of these images is so different from their inspiration that ascribing a single meaning to them is impossible. Add Jodorowsky's appropriation of eastern religions and his riffs on the western genre and trying to "figure out" or "get" El Topo becomes an exercise in futility. That last comment might seem like a criticism, I don't mean it that way. As with other cult films, the best way to watch El Topo is to suspend your disbelief, relax, and let the striking images Jodorowsky creates provoke a reaction or push your mind to come up with new associations.

Luckily, in his re-contextualization of religious and western iconography, Jodorowsky allows some fantastic visuals and juxtapositions to fall out of his skull. And, in a strange way, El Topo becomes one of the best representations of the Old Testament. Because El Topo isn't a straight adaption and takes place in some netherworld of a desert, it can be true to the spirit of the Christian text, without tackling any of its specifics. It's very easy to forget that the Old Testament is a weird and violent work. A woman gets turned into a pillar of salt, a man slaughters an entire army with a donkey's jawbone, and people get eaten by whales or squished by giants. El Topo is almost tame in comparison.