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,