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.