Review of El Topo (1970) by Forrest E — 19 Jun 2012

You've never seen anything like this, I wholeheartedly PROMISE. I don't even know how to begin effectively describing this, but this is cowboy wandering the desert in the most metaphysical Western you have ever seen.

This is the first film from Alejandro Jodorowsky that I have watched, and it's a movie I didn't know what to make of it while I was viewing it. It is one of the most surreal and bizarre films I have ever seen, if not the very most.

In fact, to call this surreal would be a gross understatement; this is as if surreal and a bad peyote trip you had while stumbling about dehydrated in the desert had a lovechild and named it El Topo. I am as certain as can be that this was crafted with the aid of heavy, heavy drug usage; there's just no other way of creating something this infused with the unreal.

David Lynch lists Jodorowsky as a major influence, and you can totally see it; I was only five minutes into the film and I was already as uncomfortable as all get out. This has an excellent sound design, as there is always some unnerving sound about, whether it be the score or some disconcerting sound effect.

There is a lot of social and religious commentary being made, but I honestly don't know what statements are being said, and I am sure that I missed an entire layer while watching this movie. It is a difficult movie to rate, because I wouldn't say that I really enjoyed it.

.. but I do always ask a movie to show me something I have never seen before, and El Topo is just that in a nutshell. You don't watch El Topo, you experience El Topo.