El Topo: From Cult to Classic

With Frank Pavich’s movie, Jodorowsky’s Dune, about to open at Film Forum in New York, and the article in the New York Times Magazine of March 14 titled “The Psychomagical Realism of Alejandro Jodorowsky” discussing Jodorowsky’s first new film in 23 years, The Dance of Reality, John Lobell decided to ask Griselda Steiner to revisit her review of Jodorowsky’s 1970 cult classic, El Topo. But first a note on Jodorowsky’s Dune from Wikipedia:

[Note: Steiner’s current comments are in italics, and her material from 1970 is in plain text.]

“And I saw a new heaven and new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.”

~ Revelation of St John, the Apocalypse, New Testament, King James Bible

El Topo has been gaining a word of mouth reputation and is described by many adjectives pro and con. Produced by Poducciones Panicas, the film was shot in 35 mm color film by Rafael Corkidi in Mexico during the summer of 1970 in a style that reflects Cinema Novo. The film goes beyond any previous or contemporary concept of cinema and speaks of a new era in civilization in which film plays troubadour to tribal myth. Like the ancestral heroes of Homer’s poetry or Beowulf, El Topo personifies man’s struggle to live with himself—on earth, with other men, and with God.

The mole is an animal that digs passages searching for the sun. Sometimes he reaches the surface. When he looks at the sun he goes blind.

El Topo is broken into Four Sections entitled: ‘Genesis’, ‘Prophets’, ‘Psalms’ and ‘Apocalypse’. Jodorowsky’s frame of reference in philosophy, world religion, Buddhism, Taoism, mystic Catholicism, (take out and) esoteric and drug cults place certain aspects of the film beyond interpretation and make it as difficult to decipher as the symbolism of a stranger’s dream. Jodorowsky has celebrated the most brutal drives in men, perhaps to enforce new life into the stale blood of the Christian host. El Topo brings the viewer into its dimension through a series of shocks, visual, literal and physical – a spurt of blood – a whiplash – a cry of agony. Halfway through the film, when the nerves are toughened by the constant flow of blood, Jodorowsky turns the film inside out and softens the viewer so that the next barrage of violence becomes more real, more painful.

As the film opens El Topo, carrying a black umbrella and dressed in a black leather cowboy outfit and gaucho hat, rides a black horse through the desert with his naked his son riding on the back. He stops at a pole pitched in the sand. He lowers his son and instructs him, “Today you are seven years old. You are a man. A real man is alone. Bury your first toy and your mother’s picture.”

In the Buddhist cycle of life, the four stages of man are marked by the goals of Knowledge, Success, Devotion, and Sannyism (Meditation). When a boy is seven years old, he leaves his family to study with a learned master.

Alexandro said, “The pole in the desert is a Tao symbol. It is a sundial. I wanted to try to film the scene at a given point facing a given direction that would cast a shadow that would point to the site of a hidden treasure. He went to that site. He dug and dug, but found nothing. As his shadow began to shorten until at noon, he had no shadow at all. And then he understood.”

THE COLONEL – Jehovah, God of Genesis, was a jealous God, the father of the tribe. El Topo kills the Colonel’s gang, who like the renegades of Sodom and Gomorrah perform sacrilege. At the monastery where they hang out and El Topo exchanges his son for Mara, the Colonel’s mistress. In the Buddhist religion, Mara is the Evil One who rejoiced not and threatened the enlightenment of Buddha. She was overcome by his power and banished from his life forever.

ADAM AND EVE – When El Topo and Mara enter the desert, Mara asks him how they will survive. She spreads her legs and digs eggs from the sand. When he shoots at a rock, water sprouts from it. He rapes her and obsessed by the power of his love, he demands that he prove himself to be the best man in the desert by conquering its four greatest masters. Alexandro said, “I put a clause in all the women’s contracts stating that they would not make love with the director. I knew nothing about her. I went to the desert with two other people, the photographer and a technician. No one else. I said, I’m not going to rehearse. There will be one take because it will be impossible to repeat. Roll the cameras. And I really, really raped her.”

SUCCESS OF THE FOUR MASTERS – Each master has achieved a peace and artistry in his own zone of retirement that presents a challenge to El Tope’s restless ability. He finds one lounging on massive pillows behind the seated figure of his gypsy mother whose pet lion paces in the background. The master builds a syntax of structures out of toothpicks. He lectures El Top on love, “Love is perfection. Perfection means getting lost. In order to get lost you must love. In order to love you must give. When you give, you give to destroy…”

In the early history of Buddhism four great Masters preside. They were Shen Hsui (Northern School,) Hui Neng (Southern School), Dogen (13th Century Japan) and Ma Tzu (Mirror Wiping Zen).

In Buddhist scripture there is a chapter entitled, “The Perfect Net.” Buddha speaks of the Net of Advantage, the Net of Truth, and the Net of Theories. “Just brethren, as when a skillful fisherman or fisher lad should drag a tiny pool of water with a fine-meshed net, he might fairly think – Whatever fish of size may be in this pond, every one will be in this net. Flounder about as they may, they will be included in it, and caught. Just so as it is with these speculators about the past and the future. In this net, flounder as they may, they are included and caught.”

THE SEEDS OF HIS OWN DESTRUCTION – Near the home of the first master a dark woman dressed as a replica of El Topo offers in a masculine voice to show El Topo through the cycle of the desert. She draws a path in the sand to each of the master’s homes. On their way, she sadistically seduces Mara. When El Topo’s conquests turn to guilt and suffering, he is tormented by the loss of God. He dies at the hands of Mara who chooses Graciela above him.

RESURRECTION – El Topo’s body is carried by lepers holding palm branches into a cavern, where he awakens years later in the form of a blond God attended to by a midget. He is offered a strange drug in the form of a beetle by a witch of the tribe, after which he shaves his head. Dressed in the ochre gown of a Buddhist monk, he promises the cripples to bring them out of their caves to freedom. He and the midget enter the town in which every form of corruption and perversion are carried out under the pyramid sign of power. They beg with a bowl for money with which they buy dynamite.

Having impregnated a woman named Jacqueline, he meets his son, now a monk, and asks him to marry them. After they have set the captives free, they are killed by the people of the town. In a superhuman effort El Topo destroys them and sacrifices himself. The midget, Jacqueline, his newborn child, and his son ride off, perhaps to breed a new cycle of life in wisdom.

El Topo acts as a man bent on saving humans from pain and suffering only to create destruction in his wake. If man, in order to redeem the social order must change his nature, than a purge would be in the first order.

“When I behold the sacred Tao Wo, my thoughts return to those who begot me, raised me, and now are tired. I would repay the bounty they have given me, but it is as the sky. It can never be approached.”

~ Tao Scriptures

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Griselda Steiner is a playwright, screenwriter, poet and arts ritic. She has written an original screenplay “The Goddess in Exile” and original film treatment “DaVinci’s New World Order.” Visit her website.