El Topo (1970) (Blu-ray Review)
Directed By: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, José Legarreta
Rated: UR/Region: A/1×33/Number of dics: 1
Available from Anchor Bay
El Topo decides to confront warrior Masters on a trans-formative desert journey he begins with his 6 year old son, who must bury his childhood totems to become a man. El Topo (the mole) claims to be God, while dressed as a gunfighter in black, riding a horse through a spiritual, mystical landscape strewn with old Western movie, and ancient Eastern religious symbols. Bandits slaughtered a village on his path, so El Topo avenges the massacred, then forcibly takes their leader’s woman Mara as his. El Topo’s surreal way is bloody, sexual and self-reflective, musing of his own demons, as he tries to vanquish those he encounters.
While the plot above does give you a great deal of detail as for what you get in El Topo I wouldn’t just assume that is it, because you’d be wrong. El Topo is a film that is very symbolic and way more complicated than any simple plot outline could explain. It is a visual film, a bloody film, and a strange film all rolled into one. The end results for El Topo may confuse you, but I think if you like the true art of filmmaking you’ll still enjoy what you see at the end of the viewing, even if you don’t understand every scene or action on screen that you see. At the heart of things we have a gunfighter who loses his way and in the second half of the film is on the road to redemption. But simply saying that would sell much of what you see along the way short.
So in that regards we do have a long film that is broken down in two parts. The first part is the gunfighter style and the second half is the redemption style that tells one full tale but do differ from each other. Alejandro Jodorowsky is a very talented and creative man. I know this is the film that started it all for him, and while El Topo is very good and a great display of what you get from the director, I wouldn’t call it his best work overall. Still, this might be the most thought provoking and it is also still a very good film. It packs blood, plot twists and turns, strange visuals, and content that could keep you debating and talking about what you just saw for days after.
– El Topo original theatrical trailer
– Original script exerpts
– El Topo photo gallery
– On camera interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky
– Feature commentary by Alejandro Jodorowsky
