El Topo (1970)

EL TOPO
Alejandro Jodorowsky
1970 • 124 Minutes • 1.33:1 • Mexico
ABKCO Films

Cast: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Mara Lorenzio, David Silva, Paula Romo, Jacqueline Luis
Screenplay: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Cinematography: Raphael Corkidi
Producers: Juan López Moctezuma, Moshe Rosemberg, Roberto Viskin

THE LEGENDARY CULT CLASSIC

You are seven years old. You are a man. Bury your first toy and your mother's picture.

This movie is a trip. An acid trip. Or at least, that’s what people who have taken acid tell me, anyway. If you’re unfamiliar with the works of Alejandro Jodorowski, then you are in for a treat. Maybe. Depending on your view surrealist art.

If you were to boil it down to one genre, EL TOPO is a western. However, it is unlike any western you have ever seen before. Jodorowski himself plays the title character (translated to English: The Mole), a black-clad gunfighter in the mythical Old West as he travels the landscape, challenging other master warriors, stopping bandits and avenging the slaughtered. As he fights his way through his challengers, he contemplates his own mortality and his personal demons.

The film is basically split into two parts. The first half feels like a surreal spaghetti western. Sort of Sergio Leone meets Federico Fellini. The second half is much more contemplative and focused on religious symbolism and eastern mysticism. Jodorowski himself calls the film an “Eastern” not a Western.

El Topo travels with his young son, simply known as “Hijo” (“son” in Spanish). After hunting down
a warlord known as The Colonel, El Topo leaves his son in the care of monks. He rides off with (abducts?) a woman named Mara, whom the Colonel kept as a slave, and she tells him that if he defeats the four greatest gunmen in the West, he will earn her love. Each gunman represents a different religion and El Topo manages to defeat them all. After defeating the gunmen, Mara betrays El Topo by shooting him in the hands and he is carried off by a band of mutant dwarves. The remainder of the film features El Topo as a religious savior to the group of mutants, of which he as promised to help them escape persecution from a town of cultists, by digging a tunnel through a cave to their freedom. Hijo arrives in the town, now a grown man and wearing his father’s black gunfighter clothes, and upon discovering his father, he intends on killing him. The film then ends in an extremely violent and bloody massacre.

The film is relentlessly brutal and purposefully shocking. Jodorowsky claimed at one point that the rape scene in which El Topo rapes Mara Lorenzio was real. He later claimed in 2009 that this was a publicity stunt intended to shock audiences. Honestly, I can believe both stories.

One of the original “Midnight Movies,” the film has become a cult classic since its original release. It’s a violent, bloody, sexual and allegorical film. What the allegory is is open to interpretation. There is a messy combination of symbolism from Christianity and Zen Buddhism. Is it about death? Or rebirth? Is El Topo Jesus? Or is he the Anti-Christ? The film ran for 5 years as a Midnight Movie, and eventually caught the attention of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who bought the film for distribution.