Review of Santa Sangre (1989) by Cassandra M — 11 Jan 2008

After a long absence Jodorowsky returned with this surreal but more accessible offering than his earlier work, focusing on a circus and starring Jodorowsky's son and grandson as Fenix, a young boy who witnesses his father cut off the arms of his mother before committing suicide. Then we see Fenix grown up and finding his mother again, and she uses him as her slave, using his hands for her various needs and also to commit murder. There are the trademark Jodorowsky images in parts with deformed people on a trip out from an asylum, and powerful scenes like the elephant being savaged for food. But it somehow has a more warmer and humble feel to it than his previous work.

Couldn't tell why Alexandro Jodorowsky would disown this film. Even though he was not as involved as in most of his projects with everything in the production of this movie, and is not as strong and violent, still has the same elements of the rest of his work, even though it wasn't written by him. It states more,as his other movies,through symbolic imagery than with the plot and the dialogues, and, in my opinion, this work is where he best applied his experience as a pantomime and circus clown he once was, even more than in Santa Sangre. While in Santa Sangre the circus world was the background of the main character, in this movie, the whole settings work in whole as a carnival or a circus. To me, It seems like a metaphor of Christ as the teacher he was, and what paradise is really and wealth is really like. A real teacher, in the word of Jodorowsky, seeks the disciple and waits to be not only outlearned by him, but destroyed. These are all elements that we can find in El Topo, The Holy Mountain and Fando y Lis, even though it was not written by him. Many times Jodorowsky gives examples through parables involving dogs, and this is one of them. What it lacks in violence, it makes up in weirdness and imaginative situations,absurd and funny. And the Tarot as an instrument for self-acknowledgment is there, too! For a director who had such bad experience as a "hire" with "Tusk" and not the need to support his children (i assume, because by then most of them were adults and experienced actors) as bad as in the past, It wouldn't have been worth it to repeat the same experience. Jodorowsky, again, is not trying to get through your concioussness, but your subconciouss, and like he said, every time he wants to reach a wider audience; we all can understand his message.