Fando & Lis
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Movie Reviews of Fando & Lis
Movie Review: Lis and Fangs
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a very odd film that in its base, is pure surrealism, even if the other reviewer said it "wasn't because it doesn't have a story to tell." Well, just to correct him and his pretentiousness, it was "surrealism" and because you were not "entertained" or moved by any of it, that does not dismiss its pretensions. Bunuel and Lynch films need to be 'commercial" in some respect in order to retrieve the funding that producers were willing to invest, while on this hand, this film was made by a madman and lunatic, purely to denounce conformist cinema. He didn't care if you were "bored" or even cried to tears, it was his attempt to put to film a Francisco Arrabal play from his memory, which was disjointed because of his drug use and other factors.
This is a pure work of art by Jodeowrosky and he succeeds in that. It is not to say that it is a simple film to watch, on the contrary, it is very difficult but I was rewarded at the end by the odd assortment of unusual characters and by the meaning of each situation, the ending was quite poignant and I even enjoyed the music and the peculiar dubbing of voices and the art from alchemistical books. For you literary folks, look for Juan José Arreola, the great Mexican writer who had a part in the film, although I wasn't able to determine what scene he was in. There is also a documentary on Jodeowrosky on the DVD, although crudely produced on cheap video, it none-the-less captures some sentiment of his. He explains his perspective on art, theology and he even plays with tarot cards and speaks about his "spectacular failure", the adaptation of Dune. Towards the end though, it becomes very inane because he is psycho-analyzing the camera man in a stupid scene while covering everyone in hog grease and I couldn't stand anymore of his "new age" proselytizing.
Movie Review: Essential Surrealist SciFi
Summary: 5 Stars
Jodorowsky's once-lost film is a meditation on, fellow Panic Movement founder, Fernando Arrabal's play. Following the travails, physical and spiritual, of the titular couple as they search post-apocalyptic landscapes for the mythic city of Tar. Action and dialogue are mostly improvised from a one-page script. True to the surrealist ethos, the symbols and theme are entirely open to the audience's interpretation. F&L is not as cohesive or consistent as the three films that followed it. It's often frustratingly episodic and Jodorowsky revels in his own amateurism. However, while not for every taste (and really, what Jodorowsky film is?), F&L is still an essential surrealist document, worthy of comparison to Bunuel's finest. Also, F&L offers rare insight into Jodorowsky's formative years. A more elegant, innocent rendering of themes which would manifest as eye-splattering overload in his later works. Fantoma has done an amazing job with the DVD transfer of an old print. You also get the documentary, Le Constellation Jodorowsky as a bonus. Cheaply shot and meandering, it is, nevertheless, worth the price of the disc - a rare chance to see and hear the director speaking openly about his life and art. The director's commentary track, while difficult to follow, is also very worthwhile for Jodorowsky fans.Movie Review: Pure masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Ive never seen a movie like Fando & Lis and never heard of this director Alejendro Jodorwsky, and im glad I found out about him. Its hard to put into words why I liked this film so much, there is so much symbolisim and meaning in every scene its like bizzare poetry. I didnt find this movie boring at all and I didnt have a hard time figuring out what was going on and I dont think you would either. Ive never seen El Topo or Holy Mountain and I dont know if they could top Fando & Lis but it seems to be everyones least favorite of the director. Anyway This is one of the most strange but beautiful films ive ever layed my eyes on, and I cant recommend it enoughMovie Review: Very weird in a good way
Summary: 5 Stars
Fando & Lis is like watching what is going on in someones imagination when they are dreaming. Its very surreal and will have you wondering just were its going to take you next. If your looking for a movie different from what your use to watching, buddy this is the movie for you.
Movie Review: Dream-like, surrealist cinema
Summary: 4 Stars
Director Alejandro Jodorowsky was a friend and working colleague at one time or another with such colorful and interesting figures as Salvador Dali, HR Giger, Jean Moebius Giraud, Juan Lopez Moctezuma [ALUCARDA], Marcel Marceau, and Fernando Arrabal. FANDO & LIS was Jodorowsky's first full-length motion picture, and it caused a riot when it premiered in Mexico in 1968. Jodorowsky even faced a deportation trial because of the controversy.
Remarkably, I found this DVD copy of Jodorowsky's FANDO & LIS at the public library. I checked it out. Initial impression -- a lot like Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's UN CHIEN ANDALOU or Jean Cocteau's BLOOD OF A POET. I watched FANDO & LIS not long after viewing Werner Herzog's AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD -- a strange film to mention in this review, perhaps, but oddly there's a similar theme here.
In Jodorowsky's movie, two lovers, Fando (Sergio Kleiner) and Lis (the pixie-like Diana Mariscal), embark on a journey for the mythical city of Tar. In Tar, all one's dreams come true, all one's earthly problems are solved. As Fando takes Lis to Tar, a journey-narrative begins. Lis is paralyzed from the waist down; Fando pushes her on a cart throughout the movie as she holds a phonograph and a drum. Lis hopes Tar will enable her to walk again.
Unlike Herzog's movie -- which was about a search for El Dorado, the mythical city of gold -- the main characters in this search for the mythical city of Tar are sympathetic -- especially Lis. (In Herzog's movie the main character is a sadistic megalomaniac.) They're portrayed as youthful, innocent, vibrant, and, of course, in love. At times Diana Marsical reminds one of Giulietta Masina from Fellini's films. Jodorowsky said this was a movie about how "sadomasochistic society" corrupts innocence.
En route to Tar, Fando and Lis encounter mud people, cavort in cemeteries, and experience Freudian flashbacks to their respective childhoods. The journey to Tar seems actually to be a psychological journey, weaving external events with the internal symbolism of the main character's psyches. The movie plays like a series of avant garde vignettes strung together end-on-end with the two main characters recurring in each one. It is in these vignettes that we learn more about Fando and Lis's backgrounds, as well as their relationship to each other.
In one encounter, a group of crossdressers swarm upon Fando, regale him, and proceed to dress him as a woman while simultaneously dressing the disabled Lis as a man. The two become mirror opposites of one another, briefly, as they discover they've been outfitted in each other's clothes. In another memorable and quite beautiful scenario (from which the DVD cover picture is taken), Fando paints his name all over Lis's body as she lays among discarded dolls.
One of the more stomach-churning encounters involves a blind man and his father, who, vampire-like, beg Lis for some of her blood. Fando consents to let them take it, and the father proceeds to extract some of Lis's blood from her arm with a syringe. I'm not sure if they filmed Diana Marsical (Lis) really getting her blood drawn, but it certainly looks like it. It's all one long camera shot -- the syringe going into the vein and the blood slowly filling the needle, then squirted into a small wine glass where the old man greedily drinks it. The blind son licks the glass clean. Pretty disgusting, and petty daring for 1960s cinema, too, if it's all real.
One of my favorite scenes is Fando's flashback to visiting his mom's deathbed as a youngster. His mom is grotesque and domineering, with a croaking, sinister voice that hardly sounds as if it belongs to a woman. She lays on her elaborate deathbed, hooked up to an absurd line of IVs and surrounded by candles. Her death bed is made up like a perverse Mardi Gras float and is pushed by scantily-clad "nurses" among a crowd of admirers in what looks like a large subterranean basement. The young Fando is clearly afraid of his mother, who thanks all the onlookers by dedicating her death to them, her "fans."
Fando is at turns loving and cruel to Lis. At one point he abandons her at the bottom of a circular pit that reminds one of a miniature version of Dante's hell. Lis is helpless and pitiable, and totally dependent on Fando. His resentment of her dependence and subsequent callousness to her seems to owe a bit to Federico Fellini's LA STRADA. In fact, FANDO & LIS was felt to be "Fellini-esque" by some of the early marketers of the movie; they tried to edit it early on to appeal to Fellini fans, according to the DVD liner notes. This DVD contains the original version, however.
In the end, Fando and Lis do not find Tar. Lis is never able to walk -- in fact, she dies. Fando visits her grave "with a flower and a dog" as he promised to her near the beginning of the movie. Inexplicably, Lis rises from the grave, nude, childlike and pure, able to walk in this dream-like sequence.
The documentary that accompanies the film is helpful in setting FANDO & LIS within the artistic milieu from which it arose. FANDO & LIS is essentially a product of the Panic Movement ("Panic" after the Greek god Pan), a mainly Spanish and Latin American reaction to the course Surrealism had taken under the dictatorial guidance of Andre Breton. According to Jodorowsky, Breton had made Surrealism acceptable, respectable, and "petit bourgeois" -- it's appeal had spread to conservative art collectors when originally it was a shocking, threatening, and transgressive phenomenon. The Panic Movement sought to correct this by staging outrageous plays and art happenings that featured nudity, urinating on religious icons, cacophonous music, and the like. FANDO & LIS definitely translates some of this outrageousness to the big screen, what with its nudity, controversial subject matter (crossdressers, the blood drinking), and jarring images (the black dominatrix with the whip, Lis licking her lips amongst a pile of cow skulls, etc.).