4. 'ACT 3'
This third Act of Jodorowsky's 'The Holy Mountain' is comprised of FOUR sections: 'Preparation' 'Initiation' 'Temptation' and 'Conclusion'.
All commentary by Al Razutis except where attributed to stated sources.
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"What is the point?"
ACT III - Sections 2,3,4 - Conclusion - by Al Razutis (2020).
"
The final three 'panels' in this series can be read as rough storyboard of the narrative, the art direction, the characterizations of this otherwise pretend to esoteric knowledge film that ends up disappointing everyone except the nihilists or fatalists or have I lost the connections here.
('Did I leave someone's favorite shots out? Pity.)
We started this story with a 'Thief' laying spread eagle in the dirt in a village who is 'rescued' by a armless legless dwarf who accompanies the Thief on a tour of a hostile, ugly, evil world of strangers.
There the thief makes 'eye contact' with a young beauty (whore) and later we'll see them going off into the 'sunset' together...
But back to the main story.
The thief hitches a ride and ascends an 'Alchemist's Tower' and enters the guy's lair only to have his shit literally cooked and 'transmuted' to 'gold', so the Alehcmiest could tell him on camera that there is more... that there is 'immortality'.
Is everyone hooked on this yet? The sets, characters, costumes, well, the whole art direction is 'pretty surreal' the NYC crowd must have said after they tired of pop and Warhol.
So, what happens next? I've outlined each 'Act' (three of them) and referred to many sources: CG Jung, Antonin Artaud, Jodorowsky in interviews, outside critics and scholars. I'm not writing a paper, I'm creating a web page to add to my previous texts on 'visual alchemy'. So, this film, this popular culture, this set of descriptions is appropriate.
This is written in the method of a continuing (stream of consciousness) prose. It's not an academic paper. I don't get paid to do this. That should clear out the resume seekers.
'Criticism can only exist as a form of love' (Andre Breton) I'm fond of re-quoting.
So, here are the final three panels. Commen5ts will follow later. The frames from the movie, selected here for the panels, tell the story.
If some can't 'read this story' from the panels, they should 'go to the movies', and try it again. Or does everything need sound these days to make it 'readable'?
Stop writing. Let's see the final panels.
Explanations or comments will follow?
There's a whole lot of them just 'waiting' like those cats on a chain in the movie..." (AR)
ACT 3 - Section 1 ('Preparation for the Journey')
A panel of frames from The Holy Mountain by Jodorowsky, this section referred to as ACT 3 section 1
Url for large panel image: http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/images/0-3-1-largest.jpg
FIRST, before we go anywhere else, let us hear from the maker of this film Alehandro Jodorowsky, as copied from previous and new sources for this 'final Act 3'.
"What does the patient Jodorowsky say about this film?"
(Cinema Canada - 'Two Visions' as interviewed by Daria Stermac 1974 - See Intro / ACT 1)
"In Holy Mountain, which is the continuation (after El Topo), the blood becomes blue, orange, yellow, and there are little birds coming from the bones. I took out the red and this way the violence is more transposed and the search for the interior great self is more objective. In Holy Mountain you do not follow a story, you follow an experience with me and with the actors, meditation, internal search in your memory. It is a training.
"The art of pictures is the art of shadows and light. For example, in my pictures there is never night. I have made three films and there is never night and never any shadows because for me, a shadow is a subjective opinion and I am searching for objectivity. Human subjectivity taints the beauty of a shadow.
"The world is perfect. What is imperfect is our subjective projection. ln the Holy Mountain we are searching for the light. At the end the picture starts to disappear and you remain sitting with a white screen which is the light. O.K. It is an act of humor - all of this life is very humorous. You have the future - it doesn't exist. You have the past - it doesn't exist anymore. You have the present which is going, going, going . . . It's a joke, isn't it? Where is the present? It's a big joke.
"In order to find you must not search. You must make a vacuum within you in the shape of the object you desire. When I want a special person for my film, I make an emptiness within myself in the exact shape of what I desire and in two days the person arrives at my house and says, "I would like to work with you." Everything that I need comes to me in this way. If I need money, money comes. Those are the ways in which one works. I am always very peaceful, very calm."
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"What does Jodorowsky the Alchemists - Magus say TO the initiates in the film?"
(Audio voice-over dialog as noted by AR)
"There are many holy mountains, but the legend is the same...
9 immortal men live at the top of the holy mountain...
from the highest peak they direct our world
they hold the secret to the conquest of death...
(projection room voice over)
they are more than 40,000 years old
but they were once like ourselves
if others have succeeded in conquering death, why must we accept it
I know where the immortals live...
and how to obtain their secret (image of rose)
in an ancient manuscript I found an etching of the 9 immortals...
and where they live
the holy mountain of lotus island (white snow peak shot)
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we must unite our forces to assault the holy mountain
and rob its wise man of their secret of immortality...
but to conquer the wisdom of the immortals we too must become wise men...
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the elements of chemistry are many (periodic table) but finite, so are the techniques of enlightenment
to reach it more quickly we will combine the techniques
with the correct formula any human being can be enlightened... (group shot silhouette in front of periodic table)
the immortals are a group
if we are to succeed we must cease to be individuals and become a collective being...
(end of projection - cut to overhead shot of thieves entering a round table room)
burn the money...
(they each push paper money into the fire at the table center)
thief! if you don't want to die... burn your money...
we shall destroy the self image... full of desire... distracted... confused...
(thieves posing with their nude plaster models)
...he forgets the great self"
(they all pick up their plaster doubles to put them into the fire)
( poses of plaster doubles melting in the fire -- cut to this group walking in mountains with staffs -- )
END OF SECTION 1
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"What does the NY Times say about Jodorwsky and his films in 2014?"
You can read for yourself: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/the-psychomagical-realism-of-alejandro-jodorowsky.html
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"What does Breckenridge say?"
Analysis of this Act III by Breckenridge
PG 19-21 Journal of Religion & Film, Vol. 19 [2015], Iss. 2, Art. 2
Breckenridge: A Path Less Traveled,
Published by DigitalCommons@UNO, 2015,
https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol19/iss2/2
"The end of the vignettes brings us to the third act and sees the pace of the film slow down, as it is from here on that the Alchemist takes them (as well as the thief and the Written Woman) through a spiritual cleansing so that they can ascend Lotus Mountain and overthrow the gods who rule the universe from its peak and take their place. Like with the Alchemist and the thief, this act is rife with empty symbolic rituals, much of them entirely of Jodorowsky's invention. To give one brief example: the Alchemist has the nine pilgrims look at their reflection in a bucket of water so they can look at the tenth member of the group who has died; they then hold a funeral and burial for the bucket of water. Others are loosely based on existing religious practices or are so generic they could apply to almost any form of spirituality (such as meditation).
"These rituals, however, serve much the same function as the ones we witnessed the Alchemist taking the Thief through: stripped of any association with a particular religion, we are supposed to see the acts in themselves at the same time that they also act in defiance of conventional religion."
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"Can we be reminded of what CG Jung said when referring to the Alchemical Opus?"
"Yes, of course. I provide a screenshot of a page from his 'Psychology and Alchemy' which I found to be a great source for those interested in visual alchemy. A comparison of this text content to Jodorowsky's own version of 'opus' is appropriate. Alchemy did not arise in a vacuum, nor was it a made up narrative game done for personal gain, i.e. 'gold'."
(AR)
(Image - enlarge - from CG Jung text - page 258 - 'The Psychic Nature of the Alchemical work')
"You have to ask yourself the following questions."
"
How is it that these 7 characters, 'thieves', figments of Jodo's imagination, or the imagination of the Alchemist in the film as he is demonstrating the influence of the '7 planets' as portrayed by these 'great thieves', how is it that these imaginings become REAL, so real that they take helicopter rides, after first burning their 'mortal' selves, or 'bodies' in the ritual that begins this final Act?
" I know someone can explain it, but for the life of me I don't have a clue." (AR)
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'EXCITING SIDE-BARS' by AR, othewise known as Face Book posts.
Al Razutis - Visual Alchemy - May 28, 2020
"How do you like it? Irreverent poem or serious prose?"
"A Kritic's Korner Side-Bar, 'SPOILER ALERT!'
and done in the style (of automatic writing)
"The false promise revealed while everyone laughed, as if on cue, because hey 'we're all dummies! said the director who made off with leading ladies and left a mess for others to clean up, but nobody stayed, enough was enough!"
"What does the cult of Charles Manson have to do with this?"
"
Did they not engage in isolation of the initiates - groupies?
Did they not engage in group-think massaged by 'mind altering' psychedellic drugs, and total subservience to 'master'?
How was Chucky different from Alejandro?" (AR)
(Pause for reflection, even if it is found in a half-buried bucket of water...)
"Oh, a movie (and many docs) were made of Chucky detailing his horror,
and only one movie (the last he would make for years and years) was made by Alejandro detailing the joke was on us, on them, but only the actors were laughing, because the script said so.
"Not a Hollywood story. Not avant-garde. Not even convincing." (AR)
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"
Or do you prefer the 'academic approach', to wit, an except from Malone page 10, 'A Holy Mountain Emerges! Between Surrealism & Esoteric Art', 2016 --
entire paper download / viewable at
< a href="http://www.alchemists.com/fb/malone_esoteric.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.alchemists.com/fb/malone_esoteric.pdf
Either way, we'll be doing it both ways.
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"EDITOR'S NOTE:
Although I am serious, I never want to return to academese or 'sterile' prose. Been there done that.
Part of the excitement enchantment of writing is to experiment with ideas and prose. Let a cadence over take you. Discover new correspondences, like 'accidental meetings' of poetry and prose."
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Al Razutis - Visual Alchemy -- May 2020
"Continuing with Jodorowsky's film The Holy Mountain"
-- Essay / post by AR as contained within quotation marks.
"ACT III --
Jodorowsky is no alchemist, although as writer director he can play one and indulge in wonderful sets / costumes / staging which actually relates more to his Catholic upbringing and hatred of all things 'church' than it does with explaining his 'anarchism - surrealism - alchemy' or other bodies of knowledge he has laid claim to in the post-underground film days of 1973.
He made this film 'The Holy Mountain' for over a million bucks (of Beatles money provided by their manager Allan Klein), hired actors, cripples, dwarves and armless and legless people, and created a 'fabulous melange' of sorts, fabulous enough to attract a cult of people, and a Canadian ex-film student, and some shows and some followers, not to mention some talented art directing collaborators.
What I discovered in my scene by scene, act by act analysis of this film 'The Holy Mountain' is the perverse quality of Jodorowsky's message concerning the 'sacred', the 'hermetic' the 'esoteric' and his dubious depiction of 'guru' 'initiation' 'knowledge' and 'immortality'.
As a self-proclaimed 'anarchist' Jodo can mess with any institution he wants. As a 'surrealist' he can trash causality and rational explanations. But as an on-screen alchemist and off screen 'magus' he is obligated (so I say) to deliver on the 'goods' or go away out of sight pretending.
But Dennis Hopper, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and various celebs, glitterati love his movies, some declared them to be the 'best ever made', and then he disappeared from the scene for decades. and I've told the story, it's searchable, even the 2014 NY Times article I link to (below) talks about his life and work, and that fact that it went nowhere.
Writing a script with an 'alchemist' character, with symbols and signs and rituals appropriated from elsewhere might get on fans in NYC but it won't sell to us'visual alchemy' folks... (not to be confused with Rosicrucians, Masons, Illuminati or any number of other clans interested in the 'alchemy' of life and things.)
I never intended, or prejudiced this review by stating a position then illustrating it. I said to myself 'show me Jodo what you mean by alchemy and the esoteric practices which you invoke literally in your story and I'll tell all what I think.
So here we are at the last Act III, the conclusion. All these posts will be collected, edited and re-posted as a web page with my illustrations / frame grab panels 'uncensored by FB standards' because the x-rated or r-rated status of this film can be 'covered up for FB' (so they don't suspend this page again based on trolled or anonymous complaints as last time) but should be web posted on my pages as I meant them to be.
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To arrive at the conclusion is to remember the beginnings of this odyssey of Jodorowsky's filmmaking which, in the US and Canada appeared with 'El Topo', the ultraviolent, sexual 'surrealist' story full of biblical references and an autobiography buried under its 'sand'.
In the first scene in El Topo the gunslinger (Jodo) comes upon a little boy in the desert (himself as a young child?). That image became the title, then a famous poster. Then the film proceeds to show us how innocence is lost and retribution becomes obsessive, even as El Topo is goaded on by 'Mara', the character he was supposed to have raped but stays within throughout all the stalking of magical gunmen until she abandons him in favor of her lesbian gunslinger... well, that was the plot, however spectacular those burning rabbits were for NYC audiences who were captivated by extremes, but were never at a surrealist ranch.
Later, the film was mired in controversy over Jodo's admitted 'rape of the actress on camera' (in 1970 interview - liked to this essay below) and the extreme hyperbole and visual excesses, and violent symbolism that permeated this film." (AR)
Url for large panel image: http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/images/0-eltopo1-panel12-largest.jpg
NOTE: Jodorowsky later denied raping the actress who played 'Mara', even explaining that it was all for 'attention getting' purposes, but this stain never went away. At one point he contradicted himself further explaining that 'penetration (of the actress) was by consent'. That's a known excuse used by pervs everywhere. No such comment was ever published from the actresses point of view. A viewing of the DVD release of El Topo shows NO GRAPHIC RAPE, only violence and the suggestion of one. The shot cuts away to another scene, so nothing is revealed by this scene. Also note, the character 'Mara' is El Topo's lover, she rides with him,
encourages him to kill his rivals, later shoots him and leaves him for a lesbian lover. It's a soap opera for prurient interests, not much profundity there.
Jodo brought Euro mime sensibilities, surrealism in set design to the American independent film scene and it was a hit for a while. His 'bad boy' of Mexican film surrealism image and practice, who also claimed to be an anarchist and alchemist surely attracted the 'celebrities', the 'Midnight Screenings' in NYC. With endorsements by Dennis Hopper, John Lennon, Yoko Ono to cement his 'cult status' he got a million dollar gift investment from Allan Klein for him to make his next film 'The Holy Mountain' 1973. And this is where things started go bad.
A parallel thing happened in 'underground films' (also called 'avant-garde films' and 'experimental films' later) on the US west-coast where LA's Kenneth Anger was busy extolling the virtues and power of Aleister Crowley's 'magick' (white magic), the Tarot and other forms of divination in his highly influential films on the underground film circuit. I am certain that it influenced a lot of viewers and filmmakers to 'give it a try', and mix it with other oriental forms of mysticism.
"
We are both in the 'beginning' and at the 'conclusion' of this cycle of work which contains everything that is problematic about American celebrity and 'Hollywood' and 'New York Underground' culture that was neither Warhol, nor avant-garde, but pretended to both.
It is in this place we can look at Jodorowsky's strategies, the story, and their unraveling to become an abject resignation from any pursuit of knowledge, offering up categorical "reality is an illuson" escapism for the end that is no longer dependent on allegories and just plain dumb pop mysto dirt to tell the tale which is now abandoned.
People did this for money. People wanted to make money. Some were willing to settle for 'magic' as long as the illusions were complete. Some just wanted the money. Some wanted notoriety, but Jodo only wanted one thing:
The only person who didn't want to make money was Jodorowsky, who did it 'for art', 'for knowledge of illusions', for performance, and took the huge million dollar 'mirror' that the film provided for him and smashed it, only to look around later and feel abandoned by all.
What started as a 'grand promise' to attain 'immortality', 'knowledge', and to go on an adventure into hermetics led by a magus, an alchemist, a magician ends up to be a joke. 'Get a life!' the alchemist magus director tells everyone, and then takes off followed by the rest as if they were servants or robots up the hill anyway as the scene fades to white.
But the bankers were not laughing.
This film, and El Topo would end up in Allan Klein's vault - and he was the Beatles manager who ponied up one million bucks so Jodo could make this film, at the insistence of John and Yoko and the likely assurances of many glitterati of these faux avant-garde culture folks in Hollywood, this film needs more than a casual accounting, acceptance or dismissal.
What is speaks to is how American film culture of the popularized and commercial 'avant-garde' type borrowed from Mexico which borrowed from Europe which borrowed from everyone else it took things from and how this tradition ended up with the final scene and literally 'throwing in the towel' and giving up, while saying the exact opposite, and calling it a 'victory'.
American culture, pop mysticism, the sixties. And a lot of it started here with this mixing of pop celebrity, charlatans and pornographers and cine-mystics and those proclaiming anarchy for their surrealist king."
-- AR 2020
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