25 August 2007
The Holy Mountain (1973)
As a caveat, I have to say straight up that I often find myself mired in lots of overwhelming questions about “meaning” when it appears to me that something’s intent is the lack of, or intentional removal of 
meaning from any sort of artistic endeavor. Specifically, I ask: what’s the point?
And okay, I fully concede there are many enthusiastic souls in the world that will come out and say: the point is is that there is no point. Fine. But I’d like to think that’s a copout. That even if you can adequately describe The Holy Mountain as “prime Fellini on really prime peyote” as Steven Puchalski of Shock Cinema magazine puts it, what’s the point? If you look at his magazine and web site, maybe it’s a moot point.
But it’s about opening your mind to new experiences, and seeing new things! Close-minded pomposity alert: That’s it? And I’m not leveling this at Jodorowsky, mind you. Or the film itself…
But a question I had only 15 or 20 minutes into the movie was whether or not there was a master plan at work, or whether Jodorowsky was just throwing whatever he wanted in front of the camera and taking pictures.
There are things in this movie I’ve never seen before — frogs dressed as [Spaniard] Centurionish-types attacking (they have spears tied to them) an Aztec mini-village? Exploding, then, in showers of blood? Skinned animals crucified? Plastic Jesus-figures mass produced (one of which appears to be made of couscous and is eaten) and burned?
Fine, fine — tell me I don’t “get” avant-garde cinema. Or simply let it exist on the level of it being a new experience you can’t have anywhere else. But with the way it throws around all the iconography it can get its hands on — religious, cultural, democratic, fascist — you have to start questioning the validity, intellectual or otherwise, of such a potpourri of competing signifiers operating above their meaning.
Puchalski’s comment re: Fellini/Jodorowsky is actually refuted within the film itself: as the planets are ascending the film’s titular hill, they see visions of death and distraction that keep them from ascending the whole bit and achieving immortality. At one point, one of the planets is distracted by drugs which prevent him from further ascension, so if it’s not drugs that allow this visual competition, then obviously it’s something else (reality, we find out, in the obnoxious ending). But even if Puchalski’s locking the movie down into something it isn’t already (“drug veritas,” or whatever), I still question his invocation of Fellini, or even Buñuel who arguably created a few films closer to The Holy Mountain. The reason for this is because I feel like there’s metaphoric tethering in Fellini and Buñuel’s films. Why does the actress change in That Obscure Object of Desire, or what exactly does Fellini suggest by the jovial dancing of all the characters at the end of 8 1/2? Cherry picking my examples, maybe, but elements that may seem somewhat random in those films can be parsed.
I don’t think The Holy Mountain was a bad move per se; I just struggle with this kind of thing vis-a-vis what I perceive it to accomplish, or offer. And maybe it’s not supposed to give me anything. Its ending was incredibly disappointing — Jodorowsky’s character himself announces to us that “real life awaits”, with a great big wink.
And all I’m left with really is that I finally “get” the ending to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which previously I had merely attributed to being an absurdist way to end an absurd movie. Alas, it was parody.
The way I see it, the characters ascending the holy mountain do achieve immortality at the end of the film as they will live forever as celluloid images. The film is very open to personal interpretations though. Part of the enjoyment for me was constantly being provoked into asking questions of each scene and what it could represent.
I was put off by the first 20mins or so too, seems that not a lot of the imagery was of use to the plot, compared to the more subtle effects used later on.