El Topo
by Alejandro Jodorowsky
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Alfonso Arau, Brontis Jodorowsky, José Legarreta, José Luis FernándezDirector: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Brand: N/A
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 125 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-05-01
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Summary of El Topo
It was the landmark cult film that began the whole Midnight Movie phenomena of the counterculture crazy 1970s. EL TOPO was the most talked about, most controversial quasi-Western head trip ever made, transforming the way risk-taking audiences, seeking mainstream Hollywood alternatives, watched edgy underground films. Classic Americana and avant-garde European cinema sensibilities meet Zen Buddhism and the Bible as master gunfighter and cosmic mystic El Topo (played by writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky) must defeat his four sharp-shooting rivals on an ever- increasingly bizarre path to allegorical self- enlightenment and surreal resurrection. -Alan JonesEl Topo's surrealism is more slapstick than Jodorwosky's brilliant follow-up, Holy Mountain, making it more akin to a spaghetti western than a psychedelic journey through the subconscious. The director stars as the gunfighter, El Topo (The Mole), who first gives his 7-year old son (played by real life son, Brontis Jodorowsky) a glimpse of manhood in the form of weaponry, then abandons him for a horseback revenge trip focused on a heartless team of raping, pillaging bandits. Along the way, he meets Mara (Mara Lorenzio), whose tough love encourages him to become a monk. On El Topo's new quest, he encounters spiritual leaders and endures a series of personal realizations about his past violence. Absurd moments, such as when the viewer first encounters the bandits sniffing and drooling over high-heeled women's shoes out in the desert, make El Topo satirically wry. Brutal scenes in which rivers of blood run through towns, or people slaughter each other in firing lines, remind the viewer of Mexico's bloody history. The mixture of ironic humor and violence in El Topo encapsulates Jodorowky's vision of a world in which reality and the imagination are fused, yet completely separate. This paradox, of great thematic concern in all of Jodorowsky's films, is most resonant in El Topo when Mara and The Mole sadistically communicate with whips, guns, and knives. As Holy Mountain's religious message centers wholly around The Alchemist's transformation of Jesus, El Topo introduces love between man and woman into the symbolic mix, compensating for the divine settings and imaginative characters that elucidate the protagonist's enlightenment in the later Holy Mountain. Only by viewing the two films as a double feature will one get the full power of Jodorowsky's Buddhist message, one of self-sacrifice and suffering towards a greater end. --Trinie Dalton
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