People have many reasons to watch movies. For many, the reasons can be fairly basic: to laugh, to cry, to be scared, to get turned on, and to make their pulses quicken, all within a safe and socially-acceptable environment. Some viewers want to be spurred to thought, others to action. But for those who truly care about cinema, there are few moviegoing pleasures more profound than to discover images that are unique and unforgettable. Such images are the stock in trade of director Alejandro Jodorowsky.
The early seventies were a time of spiritual exploration, when many people attempted to broaden their minds through drugs, sexual experimentation, Eastern mysticism, and art. In this respect, Jodorowsky was a quintessential filmmaker of the period, not only because he dealt with all of these things, but also because he was a seeker himself. A true renaissance man, Jodorowsky has worked as a director, a composer, a philosopher, a novelist, a religious scholar, a mime, a comic book writer, and a psychotherapist. Like fellow director and seeker Werner Herzog, Jodorwsky is forever in search of new worlds to explore. But unlike Herzog, whose films have taken him all over the world, Jodorowsky’s worlds reside primarily within the mind.
The most vivid cinematic distillation of Jodorowsky’s gifts obsessions is his 1973 film The Holy Mountain. The film tells the story of an alchemist (played by Jodorowsky himself) who leads nine disciples on a spiritual journey to the legendary Holy Mountain of Lotus Island in a quest for immortality. But even if you’re not down with Jodorowsky’s spirituality, it’s still easy
to appreciate the film from a purely visual standpoint, as The Holy Mountain contains some of the most wonderful and horrifying sights I’ve ever seen in a movie. A shot of Christ-like figure wailing in agony as he’s surrounded by a warehouse full of hundreds of papier-mâché Christs molded in his image. A man, shot dead, with tiny birds flying out of the bullet hole. A traveling toad and chameleon circus re-enacts the landing of the Spanish in Mexico- a creation so bizarre that I wouldn’t be surprised if Jodorowsky took it from real life.
Most magical of all is a flashback scene involving one of the disciples. In this scene, an artist called Klen takes his mistress and chauffeur to see his most treasured creation, a “love machine.” The machine is a large robotic cube with a mechanical vagina on one side, designed to be stimulated with a long metal cylinder. After the chauffeur’s half-hearted attempts fail to stimulate the machine (“frigid!” he complains), Klen’s mistress’ stimulation is far more successful. The box expands, it sways back and forth, and arm-like appendages extend from within the machine. Finally, a white goo spills from the cylinder, and shortly thereafter the machine produces a smaller machine that makes crying and cooing sounds.
Reading the above paragraph, I realize that words probably fail to do the scene justice, but if you haven’t seen the film, rest
assured that it’s one of the funniest pure sight gags I’ve ever seen. Yet there’s more on Jodorowsky’s mind here than comedy. The love machine is certainly impressive, but it’s also pretty pointless. As such, the scene indicative of the sometimes counterproductive ways that people can channel their creative instincts. Yes, Klen can build a functioning “love machine” on which people can simulate stimulation, but to what end? Little wonder that, like all of the film’s seekers, Klen ends up turning his back on his life and his creations to search for spiritual fulfillment with the Alchemist, atop the Holy Mountain.