El Topo is a 1970 Acid Western directed by Alejandro Jodorowski.
Here’s my five-word review of El Topo:
What the fuck was that?
Thanks for reading.
In full disclosure, I chose to watch this bizarre Acid Western without subtitles – making an incredibly complex movie even more difficult to comprehend.
I’m pretty sure I could have closed my eyes and imagined the whole thing and came away with more insight.
Anyway, El Topo tells the story of a mysterious gunfighter who crosses the desert on a journey that is equal parts mystical, religious and sexual. El Topo, or “The Mole”, faces and conquers four desert masters before being left for dead by his lesbian companions. He is reborn in an underground colony of dwarves and cripples and swears off violence. He becomes a beggar before freeing the cripples and exacting vengeance on their killers.
Beyond the language barrier, the challenge of El Topo is unraveling Jodorowski’s heavy layers of disjointed symbolism. Within the movie’s first 20 minutes, El Topo’s naked son buries his teddy bear and mother’s mirror in the sand, then a variety of crazed bandits fetishize women’s shoes and simulate sex with lizards and captured monks.
In a comforting sense, finding meaning in these symbols proved difficult for both amateurs and professional film critics:
Jodorowsky lifts his symbols and mythologies from everywhere: Christianity, Zen, discount-store black magic, you name it. He makes not the slightest attempt to use them so they sort out into a single logical significance. Instead, they’re employed in a shifting, prismatic way, casting their light on each other instead of on the film’s conclusion.
It’s a messy and probably short-sighted conclusion, but it feels like Jadorowski is making a statement regarding the existential futility that can accompany the search for God. He chooses the barren desert and a gunfighter trope as his setting but the story ventures into territory not usually found in Westerns.
(Apologies for the extensive plot re-telling – much of which I had to research – but it’s helpful to unravel this movie.)
The movie begins with El Topo riding across the desert with his naked son in tow. They bury his childhood possessions, say a prayer and then move on to the scene of a mass slaughter. El Topo finds the bandits responsible, then kills them before encountering a deviant Colonel holed up in a monastery. He castrates the Colonel and rescues his slave, a woman named Mara who urges him to defeat the four masters of the desert. El Topo leaves his son behind with the monks.
The four masters seemingly represent different spiritual practices. El Topo learns from their teachings before killing each in a duel. His anxiety deepens after each encounter and he finally renounces his actions and destroys his gun. An unnamed woman with a deep, male voice accompanies El Topo and Mara – she shoots El Topo in the manner of stigmata and rides off with Mara.
El Topo is later found by a collective of dwarves and cripples and revived underground. He is regarded as a God-like figure and vows to lead them out of the darkness of their caves. He reemerges as a beggar, trying to gain money for dynamite to blast open the caves. Hijo, El Topo’s abandoned son, returns as a monk – who becomes disillusioned with the town’s cultish slave owners. Hijo helps El Topo free the outcasts – who are then slaughtered by the townspeople. El Topo returns to his violent ways before his dramatic death.
There’s a case to be made that Hijo continues El Topo’s journey. There’s heavy Christian themes of redemption and the son seeks vengeance for his father’s betrayal. In an odd sense, Hijo pays for the father’s sins – much in the same way that the colony of outcasts become victims of what appears to be El Topo’s own personal redemption.
Or something like that….
The odd beauty of El Topo is found in its general weirdness. Again, the symbols may not add up to tangible meaning, but at least they’re really interesting to look at.
El Topo Archive Review: Stormy Surrealism in the Desert Heat
One would be tempted to ignore the film’s echoing gallery of ciphers and symbols, were they not so much a part of the fun. Jodorowsky, meaningful as Buñuel, meaningless as Fellini, carries his extremes further than either of them into the stormy surrealist regions of the ludicrous; but in an instant he’s back again, playing Beckett, Jarry, Peckinpah. His personification of the auteur theory would be intolerable were he not so energetic, so inventive a director, as willing to parody (the low-angle shot of El Topo bursting through a door) as to imitate (a bandit sucking the toe of an elegant high-heeled shoe).
The ending suggests an appeal to the purity of religion. A stock Old West town is draped with cultist symbols and its inhabitants (including what appears to be an anti-temperance group of women with masculine voices) cruelly buy and torture slaves for their own perverted amusement. The outsiders of the town – Hijo, El Topo, his dwarf bride and the colony of outcasts – cannot be accepted into the fold. The outcasts – dwarves, cripples and mutants – the very flawed beings Christians are supposed to help – are violently slaughtered moments after emerging from their cave prison.
El Topo’s final act is the only thing that represents an attempt at purity.
While finding meaning in this movie may be impossible, at least it’s a brilliant visual and auditory experience. The colors are acid-soaked throughout and pop against the bleak landscape of desert. Even the cartoonish villain bandits boast a festival of colors. Jadorowski plays with contrasts throughout – casting his black-clad gunfighter against pure white holy men.
There are a few staggering camera shots. El Topo and Mara are relaxing alongside a lake when the camera pans upward, zooming hundreds of feet to reveal a vast landscape. Later, El Topo is confronted in the middle of a rickety bridge hanging over a lake. Jadorowski does confining scenes well, pitting his characters inside tiny tombs and underground mazes.
Sounds permeate through scenes and reveal a jarring, disorienting atmosphere. A grating, animal-like shrieking accompanies El Topo and Hijo as they wander through the carnage of the mass slaughter. A sonic frenzy frames El Topo’s existential breakdown. Echoes heighten the dreadful sense of isolation.
There is sensory overload throughout. Vivid butcher’s blood is soaked throughout the movie and smeared on naked bodies and lips. Swarms of insects descend on flesh, dead rabbits litter a scene and naked bodies converge in sand. The effects can range from comical to often brutal, but always produces an exhilarating, if not confusing, visceral reaction.
Again, El Topo might not make a lot of sense. But at least it’s really cool to experience.
The BEST – Vaudeville Western
Every good Acid Western needs a few scenes of street theatre. When El Topo reemerges, he does so with a Dwarf bride and new skills of improvisation. It’s a far cry from killing mystics and Jesus impersonators but makes total sense in an environment where nothing makes sense.
The BEST Part 2 – Jesus Sheep
It wouldn’t fly in 2020 but you don’t see a sheep crucifixion every day. The resemblance is uncanny.
The WORST – Little Kids Playing Russian Roulette
The roughest scene in the movie occurs when the cultists are in the midst of a religious service that features Russian roulette. Naturally, a series of vile adults survive before a little kid becomes the unfortunate victim.
The WORST Part 2 – Rabbit Gravesites
One of the masters El Topo defeats seemingly runs a rabbit farm – some who are more alive than others. In drug-fueled 1970 alternative cinema, there probably is a good reason for this.
FOX FORCE FIVE RATING – 3/5
I can’t criticize this movie purely because of my own confusion. Obviously, there are layers I don’t get and not having subtitles didn’t help my experience. However, El Topo is a brilliant, inventive spin on the Western genre. In terms of a pure sensory experience, this movie is wonderfully bizarre and worth the watch.
