Review of Santa Sangre (1989) by Gordon B — 03 Jun 2011

With all of my favorite movies, I remember the moment when my jaw literally dropped and I was left in awe of something I had never seen before. With Jodorowsky's Sante Sangre, it was the scene where the white elephant is dying. Once dead, the locals put it into a gigantic coffin and march towards the dump, where the coffin breaks open and its poor body is torn to pieces by hungry peasants. The death and dissection of this beautiful creature is a metaphor for the main character's soul. Jodorowsky admits that the elephant's death is also a symbol for what humans are doing to planet Earth.

I can't guarantee you will like Sante Sangre, but you will never forget it. The movie is variously categorized as a horror film or a serial killer study, and has received reviews ranging from ridiculous to sublime. The images are archetypal in nature, depicting a young man who goes insane after witnessing his parents being killed in a circus love triangle. Later, he apparently escapes from a mental institution and goes on a killing rampage in response to the terrible images in his mind. At some point, it becomes clear that he is haunted by the ghost of his dead mother. Less clear, however, is whether any of this is really happening.

The movie is shot with very little dialogue, and some of the actors are trained in the French art of mime. This forces the viewer to put words into the mouths of incredible images of violence, symbolic death, and, ultimately, of healing and reconciliation.

Jodoworsky has been correctly accused of being an artist but not a filmmaker. He got his start as a graphic novelist, which explains his predilection for visuals over dialog. Watching his movies, you get the feeling he is constantly experimenting. With Sante Sangre, the experiment works, although a psychedelic horror film is not everyone's cup of tea. In the hands of an expert filmmaker, Sante Sangre would be a pedestrian serial killer movie. In the hands of an artist like Jodoworsky, it becomes a bunge jump into a dark, cavernous and unconscious world where nothing is real but everything is deeply meaningful.