The Holy Mountain - Alejandro Jodorowsky [1973]

Absurdist auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky - film maker, composer, graphic novelist, astrologer, tarot adept, poet, painter, mime and mystic - takes us to The Holy Mountain: epic, unbridled and maximally surrealistic; a stunning mystic imagistic mess. Cinematic occult revelation, divine acid trip, science fiction-fantasy, socio-sexual-religio-cultural critique...have it which way you will. Jodorowsky certainly does. 

Sledgehammer subtle symbolism onslaught all over the shop. Eclectic pastiche is reflected in multi-genre hopping soundtrack composed by Jodorowsky, aided and abetted by Ronald Frangipane &  Don Cherry (not methinks beloved Canadian hockey commentator -  that would be surreal -  but Don the jazz cornetist of some renown). Weirded out chant Trance Mutation, ritual riddims Pissed and Passed Out, jazz flute lite Violence of the Lambs, free folk acid Drink It, Cecil B. DeMille big orchestra soundtrack Christs 4 Sale, and them's just the first five tracks. We go on to Albinoni baroque, bachelor pad lounge core, fuzz garage and proto-dubstep. Last one's not true but you get the picture. Or maybe you don't...

Because da picture finds Christ figure wandering amid bizarre, grotesque scenarios, meeting mystical guide who introduces H/him to seven far our beings (1+7 = 8 planets in solar system folks). Said stellar signifiers, our protagonist, guide and guide's assistant divest themselves of worldly goods and seek out the Holy Mountain in order to displace the gods/old ones and so become immortal - innit. Enough references alchemical, tarot and astrological to give occultist freaks their spot the meaning kicks.

Harum scarum trailer on cinema release gives flavour - though film is, frankly, stranger:

Kaleidoscopic, crude, and thoroughly spiffing in both sound and vision. Check it out.


(Spoiler alert: film's ending suggests everything, even the film is, like...you know, an illusion...)

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