Yearly Review - The Holy Mountain
A couple of weeks ago, I did a post about the best films I'd never seen and topping that list was The Holy Mountain, a Mexican surrealist film that can't be defined any neater than that. A couple of days ago, I finally watched it and I want to try and digest it but I know a few days of digestion and one viewing isn't enough. With that in mind, I'm proposing this new feature in which I revisit particular films once a year in an attempt to understand them and there may be no better example of suitability for this format than The Holy Mountain.
First of all, I want to say that I already absolutely love this film. I don't know exactly what I expected going in but it captured me intensely and it's truly undeniable that there is no film like it. Even the films of David Lynch (America's most popular surrealist) can't help as an access point, Jodorowsky creating work that is as undeniably surreal in such a different way. Unlike Mulholland Drive though (the film most often called Lynch's magnum opus) I don't feel close to a level of understanding. There is a linear plot, sure, the plot isn't what will baffle you if you sit down and think about it. It's seven people on a quest to the top of the Holy Mountain in order to obtain immortality. It's just that along the way, you journey into imagery that is absurd on the surface with a greater meaning lying beneath many rewatches and huge contemplation. For this first discussion, I won't spoil the ending or most of the events that happen because I feel like most of you reading this have not seen the film. I'll just talk about and attempt to analyse two of the scenes that stick with me most right now and give you a year to watch the film.
I've just realised how little sense these descriptions will make if you haven't seen the film but please, try and stick with me as I try and get close to decoding some of these scenes. Both scenes are from the introductions of the seven planetary characters, the first I want to discuss being the toy maker character. She's introduced first as a clown, providing joy to all the children and handing out toys to them. That's all lovely at first but she walks to her development centre, changes into a leather, dominatrix-esque outfit and heads inside where things get a lot darker. Here, we see a war room type thing, in which they simulate global politics, work out who America's next enemy will be and then proceed to both advise America on who to invade and train children from birth to hate this new enemy. This scene seems to be a satire of the power companies who provide for children have and by setting out these ideas, they shape the next generation of humans and therefore the world. Not surprisngly, this scene reminded me a lot of Disney, who basically have a monopoly on childhood wonder in the real world. That's the scary thing, it was a satirical warning that has since come true.
Finally, there's one of my favourite scenes in the film which is both hysterical and a bit of a downer in equal measure. It's a scene that opens in an art factory where people's arses are being painted and then rubbed on paper in an assembly line, a hilarious metaphor for the commercialisation of art forms like film and painting. Soon though, we're escorted around the factory and shown all sorts of exhibits until we get to the "female pleasure" machine. No, not a machine designed to create pleasure in women, one to emulate how good you are at eliciting it, through ramming a massive rod into a hole. It's a wonderful setup and carries through pretty much how you're expecting, with a male servant character going for a run up and just jamming it in there, the art curator noting that this of course does nothing. Afterwards, the curator's mistress has a go, gently working the machine until it basically becomes a transformer and a disgusting looking liquid shoots out of the rod. It turns out, this makes a baby machine which the original machine then sits and looks after as the "father" walks away. For me, this scene is quite funny until you think about the more implicit details, that basically seems to be saying once women reach true pleasure, they'll be burdened with motherhood and lose that part of them.
Those two paragraphs give you an idea of how odd the film is but it's also funny, genius, stupid and harrowing. Watching it was an experience like no other and in a year, I'll be back to take another go at it with a whole extra year of knowledge. Maybe I'll find new things in there or maybe I'll love it just the same. Regardless, The Holy Mountain is a film I'm very excited to return to already.
First of all, I want to say that I already absolutely love this film. I don't know exactly what I expected going in but it captured me intensely and it's truly undeniable that there is no film like it. Even the films of David Lynch (America's most popular surrealist) can't help as an access point, Jodorowsky creating work that is as undeniably surreal in such a different way. Unlike Mulholland Drive though (the film most often called Lynch's magnum opus) I don't feel close to a level of understanding. There is a linear plot, sure, the plot isn't what will baffle you if you sit down and think about it. It's seven people on a quest to the top of the Holy Mountain in order to obtain immortality. It's just that along the way, you journey into imagery that is absurd on the surface with a greater meaning lying beneath many rewatches and huge contemplation. For this first discussion, I won't spoil the ending or most of the events that happen because I feel like most of you reading this have not seen the film. I'll just talk about and attempt to analyse two of the scenes that stick with me most right now and give you a year to watch the film.
I've just realised how little sense these descriptions will make if you haven't seen the film but please, try and stick with me as I try and get close to decoding some of these scenes. Both scenes are from the introductions of the seven planetary characters, the first I want to discuss being the toy maker character. She's introduced first as a clown, providing joy to all the children and handing out toys to them. That's all lovely at first but she walks to her development centre, changes into a leather, dominatrix-esque outfit and heads inside where things get a lot darker. Here, we see a war room type thing, in which they simulate global politics, work out who America's next enemy will be and then proceed to both advise America on who to invade and train children from birth to hate this new enemy. This scene seems to be a satire of the power companies who provide for children have and by setting out these ideas, they shape the next generation of humans and therefore the world. Not surprisngly, this scene reminded me a lot of Disney, who basically have a monopoly on childhood wonder in the real world. That's the scary thing, it was a satirical warning that has since come true.
Finally, there's one of my favourite scenes in the film which is both hysterical and a bit of a downer in equal measure. It's a scene that opens in an art factory where people's arses are being painted and then rubbed on paper in an assembly line, a hilarious metaphor for the commercialisation of art forms like film and painting. Soon though, we're escorted around the factory and shown all sorts of exhibits until we get to the "female pleasure" machine. No, not a machine designed to create pleasure in women, one to emulate how good you are at eliciting it, through ramming a massive rod into a hole. It's a wonderful setup and carries through pretty much how you're expecting, with a male servant character going for a run up and just jamming it in there, the art curator noting that this of course does nothing. Afterwards, the curator's mistress has a go, gently working the machine until it basically becomes a transformer and a disgusting looking liquid shoots out of the rod. It turns out, this makes a baby machine which the original machine then sits and looks after as the "father" walks away. For me, this scene is quite funny until you think about the more implicit details, that basically seems to be saying once women reach true pleasure, they'll be burdened with motherhood and lose that part of them.
Those two paragraphs give you an idea of how odd the film is but it's also funny, genius, stupid and harrowing. Watching it was an experience like no other and in a year, I'll be back to take another go at it with a whole extra year of knowledge. Maybe I'll find new things in there or maybe I'll love it just the same. Regardless, The Holy Mountain is a film I'm very excited to return to already.
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