Symbols of Horror in Santa Sangre

Santa Sangre begins at the titular church run by Concha (Blanca Guerra). As Alejandro Jodorowsky's sole horror film, he uses tropes and imagery common in the genre to craft his most plot heavy film yet, while simultaneously bringing spectators into an understanding with him about his life through symbols and visceral impact.

Santa Sangre (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1987) could easily be considered the last great film Jodorowsky made in the 20th century, but it may also be his most unique. His previous films, including Fando Y Lis, El Topo, and The Holy Mountain were surrealist films before any other identifiers. Of those, only El Topo truly could be categorized as something of another genre, namely a Western. With Santa Sangre, Jodorowsky decided to make his first and only horror film, and with that gained a whole new world of tools and ideas to utilize. For the first time in Jodorowsky’s career, his surrealist artistic sensibilities worked with the film instead of in tandem, allowing Santa Sangre to be a psychedelic reflection of himself while simultaneously helping the story develop and blossom.

Aesthetically, surrealism, and more specifically Jodorowsky’s brand of surrealism, shares many aspects with the horror genre. Horror imagery including severed limbs, skinned animals, pools of blood and even sexual violence are common in both Jodorowsky’s filmography and those of other surrealist auteurs. Even the most famous scene Un Chien Andalou (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1929), one of the most well known early surrealist films, consists of body mutilation. Works from other prominent directors, including The Neon Demon (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016), Hausu (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977) and Eraserhead (dir. David Lynch, 1977), all also incorporate and blend the surreal with the horrific. Yet, Jodorowsky’s films have a very specific style, and Santa Sangre is no different. Horror is fused with the bizarre and religious to create a very particular atmosphere, one that is both terrifying yet sacred.

Unlike his previous films, Jodorowsky relies heavily on common horror tropes and imagery, but with a psychological bend. Here, Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky) dreams as the corpses of his victims rise from their graves, questioning their fate.

In previous essays, I wrote about Jodorowsky’s tendency to use film as a mirror or a window into the psychological identity of both the audience and the director himself. His usage of surrealist symbolism and design was meant to make the audience interpret what they were viewing in a personal way, while also shedding light on Jodorowsky’s own ideals. Some major examples include the rapid shifts in framing and content of El Topo, and the tarot card connections of The Holy Mountain. Now, it would be presumptuous to say that those aspects don’t make the transition into Santa Sangre. Jodorowsky is an auteur, and as such his approach to filmmaking will always provide a backbone to any of his works. However, as we try to analyze and understand the connection behind Santa Sangre, we must assume that the techniques of the horror genre also translate accordingly, which leads to the emphasis on the body.

Horror’s connection to the physical nature of the body cannot be understated, as the genre thrives on the viewer’s ability to fear what is on the screen. That fear doesn’t simply appear out of nowhere, but is a visceral reaction the carnage depicted. The reaction stems from a response to the screen, which is itself a message sent from the filmmaker to the viewer via the film itself, an experience shared betwixt the two minds. Thomas Elsaesser suggests that this communication between the three filmic planes is enabled by these shared perceptions. “We take in films somatically, with our whole body, and we are affected by images even before cognitive information processing addresses and envelops us on another level.” [127]

Santa Sangre often uses common horror imagery to connect to the themes. In this scene, Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky) enacts his mother's revenge on the tattooed woman, using the same knifes his father used in the circus.

This idea centers on the bilateral communication between physical and emotional responses, as visuals create a distinct physical reaction in the viewer attune to primal emotions. Fear is a prominent reaction, but of course other physical emotions like sadness or arousal are also applicable. These, unlike most other emotions, are connected to bodily functions: Sweating, crying, etc. They are bodily emotions, which further blurs the line in interactions between reality and the screen. Those emotions are tied to horror, melodrama, and pornography, of which film theorist Linda Williams refers to as the ‘body genres’. Elsaesser poses the idea that these body genres, while often considered shallow in critical circles, have a direct and immediate connect to psychoanalysis.

In this process, fascination as well as fear aroused by these genres are reconnected to fundamental tropes in psychoanalysis, such as castration anxiety (horror films) the incestuous attachment to the mother (melodrama), and the primordial scene involving the parents (pornography). [132]

Psychoanalysis, and most predominantly the works of Sigmund Freud, are founding aspects of surrealism. Symbols, when perceived by the viewer, give a look into the psychological state of the viewer and often more importantly the director themself.

Santa Sangre deals heavily with the relationship between Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky) and his mother Concha (Blanca Guerra). Incestual overtones are abundant, like in the scene where Fenix massages his mother as she wakes.

In the case of Jodorowsky’s films, those three body genres and their psychoanalytic tendencies are fused together in a surrealist collage. Surrealism is known for its grotesque and unconventional imagery, utilizing both social taboos and freudian symbolism, which can span from body mutilation to sexual imagery to incestual overtones. With El Topo and The Holy Mountain, that imagery was used to provide symbolism and a connection between the viewer and Jodorowsky’s own philosophy. In Santa Sangre, the physicality is integral to the film’s themes and story.

Santa Sangre is arguably the most plot-heavy film from Jodorowsky, nearly completely disconnected from his usual avant garde non-linear storytelling format. It tells a concrete story about Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky and Adan Jodorowsky) and his upbringing in the circus, his relationship with his mother, and subsequent descent into madness. The first act of the film introduces Fenix as a young and innocent child, whose father is a knife-thrower in the midst of a tryst with the circus’s tattooed woman, and whose mother is both a trapeze artists and the leader of a cult. The cult, in particular, sets the stage for the film’s primary themes. The cult considers a young girl who was raped and subsequently had her arms cut off as their patron saint. This imagery is stereotypical for Jodorowsky’s work, but unlike most of his films, the imagery returns with a plot basis at the end of the first act. Fenix’s mother Concha (Blanca Guerra) catches her husband Orgo (Guy Stockwell) in the act with the tattooed woman, and in a panic throws sulfuric acid on his genitals. He responds by severing her arms, no different than her cult’s patron saint. The action is swift and visceral, but it brings up an important comparison. When a catholic priest arrived in the first act, he dubbed the cult’s patron saint nothing more than an idol; the connection to spirituality is nothing more than a fantasy.

These two scenes, showing the idol from the titular church and Concha's (Blanca Guerra) demise show Jodorowsky use of matching symbolism to compare meaning. It forces the viewer to make connections, with the primary one here being that Concha has suffered the same fate as her idol, and in turn appropriates her tragedy.

It is unlikely that Jodorowsky would use this transitive imagery for simply shock value. Even in his more abstract films, the symbolism did have a meaning, though it was often governed solely by unwritten rules than written rules. His prior symbolism was meant for a very specific audience: Those with intimate knowledge of the psychedelic and spiritual counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. Here, the symbolism is thematic, and obvious when considering the second act of the film.

In the second act, Fenix is now an adult who lives with his mother. His mother, now without arms, uses him as her arms. She controls him, and he gladly accepts the role. Even when she sends him off to kill women, he is compliant up until the final few kills of the film. Much like the patron saint of the cult, Concha becomes a sort of idol; an immovable force looked on with reverence and blind adoration. Here, Fenix is relegated to a dependant protagonist role. He might be the primary plot force, but he is constantly being controlled by his mother, and in doing so acts as a gate into the psyche of Jodorowsky’s mind.

Jodorowsky often utilizes repetitious framing in Santa Sangre to connect and further his intent. Here, these two shots featuring Concha (Blanca Guerra) and Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky) show the two sides of their relationship: Fenix's immense care for his mother, and his mother's abusive and controlling role in enacting her revenge on women like the one who betrayed her.

His relationship with his mother, which he stated in many interviews, was tumultuous. In an article in The Washington Post, Jodorowsky said, “I don’t remember my mother touching me, and not even my father.” In the same story, he discussed his desire to be accepted and praised by his father, which comes more into play in his 2011 film Dance of Reality, but also has some resemblance to Santa Sangre’s Orgo. In the first act of the film, Orgo is the center of Fenix’s attention. He strives to become a man like his father and confirmation of his growth as a person. This culminates in the phoenix tattoo scene, where Orgo takes a knife to Orgo’s chest and carves a phoenix into his chest. This tattoo, Orgo states, makes Fenix a man, just like himself.

Now, if you look at that last scene, you can notice that it too takes on a visceral physical format. Direct carving of a person’s skin can easily be considered body mutilation, which lands is squarely in the realm of horror imagery. But in doing so, Jodorowsky also forces the imagery to have a more haptic response on the spectator. Skin, like any other direct sensory plane, is something any spectator will be able to relate to. They understand the sensation of a cut, a gash, or a wound. By literally carving that symbolism on Fenix, Jodorowsky furthers the sensory connection for the spectator, creating a distinct physical sensation and, in addition to seeing the agony of Fenix as he receives the symbol, sears the image into the spectator’s mind. It gives the audience another layer of connection to the mimetic nature of surrealism and surrealist imagery in particular.

Throughout the film, this sort of haptic interaction between spectator and screen occurs repeatedly. The bleeding mouth of a young elephant, carved corpses rising from the dead, pseudo crucifixion, etc. While the visual style of Jodorowsky always pushes toward the physical and unconventional, the constance of bloody and horrific imagery in Santa Sangre is imperative for its understanding. It, unlike his earlier films, thrives on making the symbolism effective for all viewers, instead of just those with deep knowledge for Jodorowsky and his work. By focusing on the physical nature of many of the major recurring symbols and themes, character development and emotion is thrust into the center.

Body horror and mutilation, specifically that of severed limbs, is used throughout the film to convey meaning. These two scenes, of which the first occurs at Concha's (Blanca Guerra) death and the second during the hallucination of Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky), draw lines between the two moments. Yet, Jodorowsky doesn't shy away from adding to the symbol, in this case  the additional coffin lid posed as a trap.

 In psychoanalytic film theory, there is something called the ‘symbolic order’. This, based on the writing of Sigmund Freud, is one of the most important aspects of deciphering Jodorowsky’s style. The symbolic order can be split into two sectors: That based off of written rules, and that based off of unwritten rules. The written rules are the more obvious comparisons, like direct metaphorical symbols and obvious connotations. The unwritten rules are more abstract, and film theorist Todd McGowan calls them particularly involved with the filmmaker’s own ideals and psychology:

The symbolic order unites subjects not through what it officially proclaims but through unwritten rules that provide a secret code for those who belong and always trip up those who don’t. The unwritten rules are more important than written laws in forming social cohesion because of their exclusivity. Anyone can access and learn the written laws, but only those with inside knowledge and years of experience can master the unwritten rules. [32]

The unwritten rules function as walls to keep some subjects out, while letting those that understand the laws have a sense of belonging. Jodorowsky’s early films, up through The Holy Mountain, are very much based around the unwritten rules. The philosophical and spiritual makeup of those early films were not in the mainstream, but instead a part of the growing psychedelic counterculture. Conversely, Santa Sangre fuses the written and unwritten, giving context to both the average viewer and the insiders.

In this scene, featuring Fenix's (Axel Jodorowsky) religious hallucination, Alejandro Jodorowsky uses common religious symbolism fuses with his own avantgarde tendencies to make plain his thematic intent.

The written laws are easily noticeable on two fronts; common ideological symbols and physical comparisons. For instance, near the end of the film Fenix hallucinates an image of himself walking through a sea of birds, with his hands held out in a cross formation as the stigmata is plainly visible on his hands. The image of the crucifixion is commonly attributed to that of resurrection, sacrifice, and redemption, in this case, it represents the redemption of Fenix after his past mistakes. Another late film symbol is that of Fenix bleeding from the nose and mouth. Earlier in the film, during his childhood, Fenix witnesses an elephant bleeding out in front him, mere minutes from death. This connection via repetition connects the two, showing an old Fenix powerless to change his current fate. Both methods have very few barriers for interpretation due to their inherent lucidity. Compared to his earlier films, Jodorowsky’s surrealist tendencies are exponentially easier to understand.

In conclusion Santa Sangre succeeds as a narrative film where his past films failed for three intrinsically linked reasons. First, the film is a close representation of Jodorowsky’s own familial life, a cinematic symbol of his problems with his parents and his drive to become an accepted member of his own family. The second is the fusion of unwritten and written laws, allowing a wider audience to understand and relate to Jodorowsky’s message. Finally, the third piece is the physicality and body-focused nature of the symbols within the film. By focusing solely on the interactions of the body, the symbols become coded closely with the human condition, which forces the viewer to draw more significance from them.

Without any of these three aspects, Santa Sangre would not be a successful film. However, Jodorowsky understands what makes the human mind tick. He once said,  “What I am trying to do when I use symbols is to awaken in your unconscious some reaction. I am very conscious of what I am using because symbols can be very dangerous. When we use normal language we can defend ourselves because our society is a linguistic society, a semantic society. But when you start to speak, not with words, but only with images, the people cannot defend themselves.” His knowledge of surrealism and consistent usage of horror-oriented symbols allows the plot to function, and blur the lines between the spectator and the filmmaker, and in more complete way than he had done prior. That said, Santa Sangre is by no means a deviation from his style. In fact, it is an evolution.

[1] Freud, S. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. Garden City: Garden City Publishing, 1948.

[2] Elsaesser, T., & Hagener, M. Film theory: an introduction through the senses. p.124-140. New York: Routledge, 2015.

[3] Williams, L. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” in Film Quarterly 44, no.4. P.2-14. 1991.

[4] McGowan, T. Psychoanalytic film theory and the rules of the game. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.

[5] Dollar, S. Alejandro Jodorowsky's 'Dance of Reality' takes a look at his painful childhood in Chile. The Washington Post. WP Company, 23 May 2014.

[6] Fando y Lis. Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Mexico: ABKCO Records, 1968.

[7] The Holy Mountain. Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Mexico/United States: ABKCO Records, 1973.
[8] Santa Sangre. Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Mexico/United States: ABKCO Records, 1973.

[9] El Topo. Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Mexico/United States: ABKCO Films, 1970.

[10] Hausu. Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi. Japan: Toho, 1977.

[11] Eraserhead. Directed by David Lynch.United States: Libra Films International, 1977.

[12]  The Neon Demon. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn.United States: Amazon Pictures, 2016.

Surrealist Deconstruction in The Holy Mountain

Alejandro Jodorowsky stars as The Alchemist in The Holy Mountain.

In the late 1920s, the surrealist film movement was slowly beginning to grow in the Spanish avant-garde art scene. Filmmakers like Luis Bunuel, René Clair, Germaine Dulac and artist Salvador Dali had taken the same tenets from the movement's physical art counterpart and transposed them into the motion picture. In essence, surrealism in film focused on abusing all conventions and using imagery that is simultaneously grotesque, absurd and humorous to attack the main focus of the medium: Presenting stories and narratives in a realistic fashion. While fantasy is a mainstay of the cinematic world even today, it still retains its more stereotypical narrative flow and sensibilities to allow audiences to digest. However, fantasy is not the same as surrealism. Surrealism disregards everything expected from filmmaking conventions to instead force the viewer to question their own ideas and visual connections.

Alejandro Jodorowsky dabbled in surrealism in his early films, first using the concept in his short film  La Cravate (1957). Telling a science fiction tale of head swapping and manipulative identities, Cravate primarily utilized Jodorowsky's training in mime to convey the more abstract portions of the script. Though surrealist in implementation,its overt usayge of mime and the lack of budget depreciated the style immensely. Transitioning to a primarily narrative storytelling with Fando y Lis, albeit with a patchwork editing structure, Jodorowsky begun to experiment with fusing the avant-garde with the approachable.

With his breakout film El Topo (1970), Jodorowsky began to dabble in genre works and using a relatively understandable plot structure. Formed with the template of a classic western, El Topo was the closest Jodorowsky ever got to creating a film with commercial and populist appeal, which is something even Bunuel did with films like Un Chien Andalou (1929) and Los Olvidados (1951). Yet, Jodorowsky's surrealist imagery remained, crafting a tapestry of absurd juxtapositions commenting on everything from religion to sexuality.

The Holy Mountain is laden with abstract and absurd images, like this shot from early in the film using both insects and the eye; both integral parts of the surrealist imagery zeitgeist.

With his fourth film, The Holy Mountain (1973), Jodorowsky made the transition to full surrealist filmmaking: Instead of solely using the techniques of past artists and movements, he transformed them into something unique to his personal philosophy and used them to completely deconstruct the film form in a similar matter to Dali's masterpieces. He uses Freudian and absurdist imagery to call attention to the meaning of the visuals themselves and the viewer's connection to them, as well as a combination of montages and the Kuleshov effect to form relationships between those surreal images. By using the film as a form of looking glass into the mind of the viewer, character, and director all at once, the film offers an unconventional thesis to the art of film itself and its obtuse relationship with representing reality.

The surrealist imagery in The Holy Mounatin, like this scene of manufactured faces, often has both sociopolitical commentary and plot importance.

Just as in his earlier films, Jodorowosky capitalizes on surrealistic imagery to attack viewers' senses in Holy Mountain, but instead of working the images around the story, the images are inherently connected to the story itself. The first shot of the film presents a mystical temple-esque setting, as a black-cloaked figure shaves the hair of two young women. Absurd and jarring, the scene disregards exposition and sending the viewer directly into a state of questioning. Throughout the film, the surrealism ramps up considerably, including scenes involving birds flying from the wounds of murdered foreigners, guns shaped like religious artifacts, a room filled with statues of Jesus Christ and thousands of potatoes and yams, and the mass production of body parts.

According to Friedrich Kittler, "Film replays to its viewers their own processes of perception  – and this with a prediction achievable only via experiment, which is to say, it cannot be represented either by consciousness or language."[1] Kittler's argument centers on the idea that the effectiveness of imagery and symbolism in film can only be measured by the psychological reaction of the viewer. In his book Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses, Thomas Elsaesser explains that this argument suggest that cinema itself is tied closely with "madness and trauma, rather than realism and documentation." [2] 

When examining the cinematic art itself, one can assume the conveyance of story and meaning is of the utmost importance, with the suspension of disbelief being paramount to a film success. Yet, surrealism sheds that in favor of visceral reactions and emotional responses. Jodorowsky's imagery is fully rooted in those sentiments. His usage of unconventional and abstract mise-en-scene is entirely tied to the audience's ability to interpret it in their own way, and with that deconstructs the film into individual images and frames. More in line with static art, the shot composition of Holy Mountain is meant to be analyzed, not simply understood.

In this scene from Un Chien Andalout, Luis Bunuel crafted one of the most iconic match cuts in cinematic history.

While the solitary aspects of the visual image are integral to surrealism's success, film surrealism incorporates the entirety of the cinematic zeitgeist. One of the most prominent examples of this lies in Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou, with the now iconic match cut of the moon and the slitting eye. His usage of conventional techniques in unconventional manners became a staple of the surrealist film movement, of which Jodorowsky continued throughout his career. In particular, the use of montage in The Holy Mountain serves as a vehicle for metaphorical and allegorical symbolism via overt juxtaposition. In addition, the montages themselves call attention to the art of language based storytelling.

Jodorowsky's spirituality and interest in tarot cards provides the framework for much of The Holy Mountain.

The majority of the montages in the film take the place of small stories told by the head monk of the Holy Mountain, as he outlines societies on various planets in the solar system. Each of these sequences transitions from the main tale of the Fool and the Alchemist into an alternate environment, each with their own quirks and stylistic tendencies. Working on multiple levels, each planet connects to a tarot card and a lesson taught to the Fool, as well as independent tales expanding the world of the film in unexpected ways. With each passing tale, the worlds get progressively absurd, eliminating any semblance of realism. By clashing with audience's expectations of the approachability of stories to instead force unintentional or intentional allegorical symbolism, The Holy Mountain shifts the importance of the film from the exterior to the interior, tying the film directly to the act of spectatorship.  

This scene, involving a bleeding Christ and this group of women and ape, is an early example of the Kuleshov effect in The Holy Mountain.

In his essay "Methods of Montage," film theorist Sergei Eisenstein states, "Simple relationships, giving for a clarity of impression, are for this reason necessary for maximum effectiveness." [3] Creating these relationships, albeit unconventionally, is the heart of perception manipulation in surrealist film. Perception is key when discussing cinematic surrealism, and the eye and its relationship with the screen is integral. Among the montages, the Kuleshov effect becomes a crucial aspect of how Jodorowsky's surrealist pseudo-symbolism works. Cuts are timed with almost complete synthesis to transitive meaning, every scene change signifying a moment of insight.Those single moments offer a close look at how the otherwise stream-of-consciousness style narrative is constructed. Take, for example, the transitions between the construction of new musculature and religious weaponry, or the earlier scene with the statue of Jesus and the group of women and apes. It is not that his intentions were to create a direct story, but instead to force audiences to create connections.

What sets Jodorowsky's film apart from others that use the same effects and conventions is the director's intent. In the majority of populist and mainstream filmmaking, techniques such as the Kuleshov effect and intricate montage are used to convey specific plot-oriented information or a particular theme or message. Stanley Kubrick, for example utilized the Kuleshov effect in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1970) to make Hal 9000, a solitary light, convey emotion throughout the film. Jodorowsky, like the surrealists before him, uses those techniques to bring attention to the techniques themselves. Surrealism thrives on the destruction of tropes and expectations to manipulate its respective medium, transforming the viewers concept of reality by manipulating their individual ideals. The only way to truly understand how The Holy Mountain works as a film demands the understanding of how films are viewed, which is precisely the deconstruction and self-referential nature that the surrealist movement was built upon.

The Alchemist (Alejandro Jodorowsky) delivers the final aside in The Holy Mountain.

The Holy Mountain does not use visuals and methods to simply dismantle the medium, but also the act of filmmaking itself. Jodorowsky, after spending the vast majority of the film dissecting and assaulting the senses of viewers through imagery, chose to end the film with an aside reminiscent of the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). As the Alchemist talks to his disciples, he says "We began in a fairytale and we came to life, but is this life reality? No. It is a film. Zoom back camera. We are images, dreams, photographs. We must not stay here. Prisoners! We shall break the illusion. This is magic! Goodbye to the Holy Mountain. Real life awaits us." This final scene completes Jodorowsky's abstract composition and reveals his intentions and the film's true theme. The Holy Mountain is a symbol for film, and its disconnection from reality. The Holy Mountain, as a film itself, presents an argument for film's imprecise way of representing reality, as each element requires knowledge of both the eye and the screen. Perception is forced in film, crafted by the hands of its creators and manipulated in such a way that deception is tantamount to proper storytelling. The audience, the characters, and the director are all single parts of a larger whole. The screen is not a vehicle for a story or meaning, but a way to connect various people and imagery in one solitary medium. Jodorowsky seems to argue that film is an imperfect art form, but within its imperfection lies a tapestry of complexities that prove film is an art and not just entertainment.

[1] Kittler, Friedreich A. "Romanticism -- Psychoanalysis -- Film: A History of the Double," in Literature, Media, Information Systems: Essays. Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, 1997.

[2] Elsaesser, T., & Hagener, M. Film theory: an introduction through the senses. p.173. New York: Routledge, 2015.

[3] Eisenstein, S., & Leyda, J. Film form: Essays in Film Theory. p.73. San Diego: Harvest, 2002.

[4]El Topo. Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Mexico/United States: ABKCO Films, 1970. [5]La Cravate. Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. France: 1957. [6]Fando y Lis. Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Mexico: ABKCO Records, 1968. [7]The Holy Mountain. Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Mexico/United States: ABKCO Records, 1973.

[8]2001: A Space Odyssey. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. United States: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1968

[9]Los Olvidados. Directed by Luis Buñuel. Mexico: Koch-Lorber Films, 1951.

[10]Un Chien Andalou. Directed by Luis Buñuel. France: Les Grands Films, 1929.

[11]Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones. United Kingdom: Columbia Tristar, 1975,

The Spiritual Symbolism of El Topo: Part Two

Continued from Part One:

While the first act of Alejandro Jodorowsky's spiritual genre-bender El Topo can be considered a pseudo-western, it is only one half of a larger whole that defies categorization. The film can be split into two parts, ending where the last article left off: El Topo's pilgrimage back through the carnage. The first half is a story of vengeance not dissimilar to films such as Oldboy, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Unforgiven, though with a palpable sense of religious surrealism. The second half of the film, on the other hand, is a more intimate story of redemption and self-identification.

Paula Romo as the Woman in Black in El Topo (1970)

The turning point for the film occurs on the bridge where El Topo stands across from the Woman in Black (Paula Romo) who assisted him in finding the four gun masters. As she betrays and fires upon him, El Topo stands with outspread arms and accepts the attack. Shot after shot, he staggers once again into that crucifixion-esque pose. As established earlier, Jodorowsky has a penchant for religious symbolism. This scene is no different, equating El Topo, who had already referred to himself frequently as God, to the son of God himself. After discovering the folly of his ways in his blood-soaked quest, El Topo offers himself up to atone for his sins.

El Topo's (Alejandro Jodorowsky) 'death' in El Topo (1970)

However, this same scene has a different, more broad meaning in the context of the story. El Topo's apparent 'death' acts as a turning point for the character, the story, and the religious thematic presence. Namely, a shift from Judeo-Christian symbolism and ideology to a more Eastern-centered philosophy. In regards to the character himself, we see a change from a sin-focused destructive inclination to a more nurturing, selfless ideology. The film itself changes tone immensely, shedding most of the token Western tropes that it relied on up to this point in favor for heavier Eastern overtones and surrealist visual comparisons of cults to personal spirituality. Finally, the themes of the film shift toward broad societal commentary, highlighting and commenting on perpetual taboos and prejudices while simultaneously shedding social norms and operating on its own unique plane.

The beginning of the second act includes a title card, which simply reads "Psalms." In the Christian bible, the book of Psalms is a book of short poems and songs commonly cited to King David. The psalms deal with many aspects of an individual's role including  honesty, pain, anger, sorrow, questioning, love and praise, though they always loop back to the individual's own faith. By beginning the second act of El Topo with Psalms, Jodorowsky sets an immediate identifier for the scenes to follow. El Topo will face many of life's more evocative emotion, in a journey to his own spiritual awakening.

Alejandro Jodorowsky in El Topo (1970)

Following the title card, El Topo is shown to be in a meditative state, surrounded by a group of monks, many of whom are disfigured or deformed. He has spent years meditating on the gun masters "four lessons," and in the process his physical form has changed. Gone is the leather clad, dark-haired gunslinger; In his place, an enlightened blonde. After his betrayal, the group of mutants and dwarves that rescued him had begun to praise him as a God. "I am not God. I am a man," he tells them, demonstrating the change in his psyche that has occurred.

El Topo's physical changes through years of meditation are used by Jodorowsky to add to the earlier moment of pseudo-crucifixion. After seeing his mistakes in his previous life and meditating on those mistakes, El Topo is shown to have completed his own form of resurrection or reincarnation, following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, Buddha, and nearly all enlightened deities.

The mutants of El Topo (1970)

In that same regard, the group of mutants is important once again. They, too, symbolize a change in El Topo’s philosophy, with the gunslinger shifting toward a more selfless lifestyle. A common theme in religious texts is the sacred nature of caring for the unwanted and the disenfranchised. In Christianity, this theme includes parables where Jesus, the “King of Kings,” stoops down to help the sick and weary, including lepers and deformities. Buddhism is built on those ideas, with the journey to enlightenment being filled with looking out for those less fortunate.

Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jacqueline Luis as El Topo's wife in El Topo (1970)

Here, El Topo has shed his old lifestyle for a new humble outlook. In the first half of the film, he leaves his son at a monastery to bring an attractive woman along on his journeys; in one of the more controversial scenes in the film, El Topo rapes her and converts her over to his mindset. In the second act, his attitude toward women - and people in general - is more intrinsic, where he is shown to care immensely for the mutants even though the rest of the population sees them as sideshow acts. His new wife (Jacqueline Luis), who was also the first to talk to him after his reawakening, is shown as a distinctly caring and quaint individual; a far cry from his lover in the first act.

The town cult in El Topo (1970)

In town, the most predominate piece of surrealistic imagery comes from the local religion, which is more of a cult than any established belief system. Centered around a symbol similar to the all-seeing eye affiliated with the illuminati, this cult is shown to have a drastic negative effect on its townsfolk. For instance, one of the first sequences involves the town beating and branding a black man, before a group of women force themselves upon him and then send him off to die. The cult is shown to bring out the worst in society, as Jodorowsky uses his surrealist inclinations to highlight the immorality of modern culture. In doing so, Jodorowsky makes an argument toward a disconnection between the broader whole of human culture and that of enlightened and spiritual individuals.

El Topo's final moments in El Topo (1970)

El Topo’s final scene closes the titular character’s journey through spirituality and violence in a way that not many other films could pull off. After witnessing the massacre of his people and the return of his son, he commits self-immolation by combustion, a common protest by Buddhist practitioners. Here, the act is used by El Topo as a form of repentance and acceptance of his life’s journey. His grave then becomes a beehive, just as the graves of the gun masters did in the first half of the film. Jodorowsky uses the same symbols in repetition to make the film almost cyclical, with El Topo’s son riding into the distance with his wife and child in a near perfect mirror of the opening shots.

The overall arc of El Topo eventually became a staple of Jodorowsky's creative work, with many aspects reappearing in different forms and contexts. In his graphic novel Son of the Gun, the main character Juan Solo goes through a similar journey with a blood-soaked origin progressing toward spiritual enlightenment, and finally martyrdom in the face of extreme persecution or tragedy. In the novel, Solo begins his life as a sharpshooter and quickly finds his route to fortune, paved with the blood of his victims. As the story progresses and Solo stumbles into an oedipal downfall, he eventually finds redemption at the hands of a desert church. Finally, just as in El Topo, Solo commits religious suicide in front of a vast audience, though the method varies from the self burning in El Topo.

Father and son, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Brontis Jodorowsky in El Topo (1970)

There are, of course, differences between the two narratives, but the main turning points remain the same. In fact, Son of the Gun shares one more similarity with El Topo in the form of the child prodigy gunslinger. El Topo begins with Topo and his son riding away from his mother’s grave, and eventually El Topo teaches the young boy to shoot, only to be usurped by him in the final act. Son of the Gun’s child is Solo’s younger brother, who after also having been taught to shoot by the protagonist, discovers his brother has been sleeping with their mother (unknowingly).

By using a younger rival or student as a late-narrative foil, Jodorowsky allows one final theme to squeeze through the cracks. Specifically, the concept that a person’s actions can both corrupt and save another. In both cases, the protagonist’s original contact with their students change the character for the worse: In El Topo’s case, El Topo’s abandonment of his son in favor for a woman pushed him to pursue violence in the same vein as his father. On the other hand, the final interaction between father and son redeems both characters, with El Topo embracing his sin and mistakes and becoming a martyr, and his son taking up his mantle. The relation is important as well, seeing that a father and son or two brothers are closer and more influential on one another than as solely teachers and pupils.

To close, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s films are dense, and can be dissected in any number of ways. Many of these analyses are just one way to look at his symbolism, though with Jodorowsky and his surrealism, his intent is often heavily blurred. Nevertheless, with El Topo, Jodo cemented his penchant for the religious and the manic, all the while keeping partially in line with its Western genre roots.