Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain

The Holy Mountain (1973).
Movie poster from Wikipedia.
No copyright infringement intended.

When in early October I found myself in front of Bosch’s paintings at the Museo del Prado, I had two questions: “What did he sniff (smoke/ingest/inject)?” and “Why didn’t the church burn him at the stake?” Although I had seen and studied the reproductions of “The Garden of Earthly Delights” and other works many times before, nothing prepared me for the impact of Bosch’s psychedelia in its full size and vibrancy of the five-hundred-year-old pigments. I am still mystified by El Bosco’s visions and his long and respectable life, but if the same two questions were asked about Alejandro Jodorowsky and his 1973 film The Holy Mountain, I would have ready answers. By the 1970s, persecution of heretics has become far less exothermic than in the Middle Ages, and rumor has it that Jodorowsky and his crew consumed mushrooms and dropped acid while making the movie – and the movie does nothing at all to dispel this rumor (see for yourself).

The screening was offered by the Rubin Museum of Art, a place where fearsome Tibetan gods do perfectly balanced double ganchos while celebrating their freedom from attachment, and where the Cabaret Cinema offers the darnedest selection of films. The audience was youthful and well hydrated, as the price of admission was $10 spent at the bar or at the gift shop. An offering to Bacchus was a wise choice, because for the first half hour I regretted being too sober.

Few months ago, I saw Jodorowsky’s 2013 opus, The Dance of Reality, which has little to do with dancing and even less to do with reality, but which instead contemplates what happens if you cross the East European Jewish craziness with the Latin American craziness. In the forty years that separate The Dance from The Mountain, Jodorowsky has grown wiser – and sadder. He is still fond of in-your-face and over-the-top, though carefully calculated and staged visuals: blood, death, nudity, sex, torture, blasphemy, mutilation, intoxication, debauchery, and every imaginable vice, – anything to shock the viewer. These grotesque images remind me of Maslenitsa (or carnival), a week before Lent when pagan and Christian traditions fuse and when things that are forbidden at other times are briefly allowed and celebrated. But with Jodorowsky, it’s the rites of spring all year round, at full volume, absurdity, exhibitionism, and flamboyance, so much so that their shock value undermines itself, which, I suspect, is exactly how the director wants it.

There are three saving graces to Jodorowsky excesses. The first is humor: whenever the story waxes solemn and philosophical, you can trust Jodorowsky to mock himself and his own creation mercilessly and in the next frame smash his own pedestal with endearing gusto. I believe that this self-mockery was more effective in The Mountain than in The Dance and it is this irreverent humor that saves the older film from being a superficial exercise in fungi-induced quasi-spirituality. The second grace is aesthetics: Jodorowsky always makes sure that his stories are artful and at least somewhat beautiful, even when they are scary, revolting, or bizarre. And the third grace is Jodorowsky’s talent and intelligence. No matter how broad his expressive means are, they are always informed by the author’s connection to the sources of true knowledge and for the most part avoid being vacuous, manipulative, and self-serving (although it is said that George Harrison turned down the role in The Mountain when he realized that the script required the camera to stare at him where the sun doesn't shine).

The Mountain follows a predictable chain of trials and initiations with as much pomp and depth as The Magic Flute and which is familiar to anybody who ever engaged in a spiritual practice. Jodorowsky (in marvelous platform boots) plays the Alchemist, the emcee or the puppeteer of the entire story. The most entertaining part of the film is a gallery of utterly unwholesome characters, one for each planet (when Pluto was still a planet - but then one character drowns) and every one a “thief”, depicted in broad satire. The miscreants come to the Alchemist in search of immortality and embark on a quest for enlightenment, which seems to be somewhat less exciting and certainly less pleasant than their past iniquities.

Another memorable scene is a remarkable sequence of reptile circus depicting the conquest of Mexico. The Aztecs are portrayed by chameleons in colorful outfits and the conquistadors by rather revolting toads in monks' hoods. In the end, - not unexpectedly - the entire set is blown to smithereens and bathed in rivers of blood. Jodorowsky certainly knows a thing or two about the pleasures of destruction.

Yet another scene, in which the Alchemist turns the Fool’s excrement into gold, reminded me of a dream that I had on April Fool’s Day last year:

YK, my frequent dance partner, takes me to a lab run by his mentor, a short, energetic woman. The woman sits me down, attaches wires to the fattest parts of my thighs, and plugs the other ends of the wires into something like an amplifier. The amplifier is attached to another machine that has a large glass jar on top. The woman turns the machine on, the machine starts buzzing, and the jar gradually fills up with stuff, as though signals from my body are transformed into matter. The woman shows me the gooey substance in the jar: it’s brownish and utterly disgusting. I exclaim recoiling in revulsion: “Is that my true essence?! I cannot believe I am made of shit!” The woman pats me on the back reassuringly and says with a half-smile: “Don’t worry, hon. Everybody looks like that when distilled!”

I woke up before I could turn my essence into anything that could help to boost my bank account, but I felt great satisfaction when I saw a scene from my own dream committed to celluloid forty years earlier. And I did not even need mushrooms or acid!