Review of The Holy Mountain (1973) by Cj K — 26 Oct 2009

Pretentious, striking, stoney, bizarre.

Pretentious: The movie tries too hard, none of the iconography or references are subtle. For better or for worse this comes across as the sort of movie a 14 year old boy would make and think that it was deep and arty. It?s all over the place and very self indulgent. Too many ideas, little cohesion.

Striking: Some of the scenes are beautiful on the level of shots from A Clockwork Orange. However it seems to drift from average shots to striking images and back again whereas Kubrik could maintain the visual continuity. For better or for worse this movie almost seems like string of consciousness: ?here a bunch of different ideas and scenes I have for a movie, let?s pack them all together and see what happens?

Stoney: By admission, the film maker and member of the cast used ?help? on at least one film. This movie comes across as one that would be more enjoyable under the influence. The 70?s new age idealism is dated and is as easy to make fun of as the religion this movie mocks which is detrimental to any point the director is trying to make.

Bizzarre: Perhaps the best reason to watch the film is that it is bizarre and you?ll find few other equals in this category. However, being bizarre alone does not necessarily make it a ?good? movie.

I think you could compress this movie into 20 minutes of the most interesting and striking scenes and you would have a better movie for it.