This violent and allegorical Mexican western attracted a cult following in its day. It is the story of El Topo, a gunslinger who sets out for revenge against the outlaws who slew his wife. He ends up getting his revenge and saving the life of a woman who is being terrorized by bandits. She leads El Topo (which means "the Mole" in English) on a search for the region's top four gunfighters. But before they set off, Topo leaves his young son in a monastery. He and the woman hook up with another
female and begin their search. During one battle, El Topo is wounded and the women leave him to die. His comatose body is found by a strange group of cave dwelling people who take him to their subterranean home. He does not wake up for many years. When he does, he is enlisted to help the clan dig an escape tunnel. Later they come to a tiny town where the residents belong to a weird religious cult and El Topo's son has become a monk. The townsfolk are terrorized by a sadistic sheriff. When the clan members come into the town, the stage is set for a blood-soaked tragedy. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
You may find it a tiresome, macho relic -- or a ragtag circus wandering through a fantasy realm part Treasure of the Sierra Madre, part Tolkien's Middle-earth.
El Topo is a good deal more interesting and a good deal less hung up on its own pretensions than all my most intelligent friends had led me to believe.
Jodorowsky dazzles us with such delicate mythological footwork that the violence becomes distanced, somehow, and we accept it like the slaughters in the Old Testament.
An extravagant hodgepodge of hand-me-down surrealism, mysticism, Italian westerns, theater of cruelty, and Buñuel -- more enjoyable for its unending string of outrages than for its capacity to make coherent sense.
Spiritual violence, class warfare, and plenty of mysticism go into Alejandro Jodorowsky's desert-set whatsit, now readily available in a solid transfer, thanks to Anchor Bay.
its mixture of genre revisionism, religious mysticism, and shocking visuals felt new and wild and meaningful, at least to those who wanted to see it that way.
While I truly do doubt that modern viewer will have much use for Jodorowsky's dated spiritual philosophy, the style with wich he expresses that philosophy is often quite exciting.
a mystic trip through political, religious and philosophical terrains, gunning down all normative notions of what the western - or indeed Western civilisation - is supposed to be.
Without the aid of mind-expanding narcotics though, El Topo can't help looking laughably ramshackle, the combination of bad dubbing, shoddy camerawork and over-the-top performances making it pretty much unwatchable by modern standards.
It's steeped in blood and sex and dream imagery and weird music and imparts a sense of heat and wonder and even revulsion in a way that always feels artful and exact.
This was Alejandro Jodorowsky's first recognised cult movie in the early seventies. Shot in Mexico, El Topo (or the mole in English) is a gunslinger (played by Jodorowsky), who, dressed completely in black leather, rides on his horse with his seven-year-old son through the desert; until they come across a massacre of
people. One of the survivors tells El Topo who the culprits are, and he then takes on the guise of God and seeks revenge. There is a lot of surrealistic imagery from then on as Jodorowsky explores violence, racism and religious themes, but it is absorbing and the ending is very obscure. An easy candidate for a cult movie.
This has to be the most F_-_ Up Movie I have ever seen, What I thought was going to be a spaghetti Western turned out to be anything but. Those that called this a master piece, well I guess I would have a hard time understanding you. Don't think this ever hit the big screen in the US. I will give it 2 stars for each
hour of my time it wasted.
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