EL TOPO
by B Guillory
TRUEGORE VIDEO

How many times out of the year are we intoxicated at a party? How many times out of that exact number does someone make the exclamation: “Oh, ask him; he’s a Film Buff?" Now, how many times out of that approximate fraction are we sucked into an abysmal discussion about celluloid absurdities?

The original definition of the word buff:
Buff 1 n. A soft, thick, undyed leather made chiefly from the skins of buffalo,
elk, or oxen.

JUXTAPOSE

Buff 2 n. Informal One who is enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a subject: a Civil War
buff.

At these parties, with which buff are they labeling us? According to the latter definition, can’t any employee of the nearest Blockbuster franchise be a Film Buff? The former definition is most fitting; after all, someone who truly loves cinema is challenged by the medium and its possibilities. 1980’s films are absolutely adored by my generation, but this twist-tie lot of filmmaking could have been the end of any progression in film studies or theories. We are still studying the ideas of Brecht and Godard, but the extrapolative efforts seem to be missing. The layers and planes of two-dimensional existence in cinema (rack focused or deep focused) can multiply with challenge, but the viewers have to challenge themselves.

This may seem like an ostentatious, soap box rape—maybe it is, but this attempt is actually an oblong, pretentious introduction to a
review on a film that challenges the viewer and opens new doors to art
and life: El Topo (The Mole).

If the fleshy amalgamation of dead murderers makes up Mary
Shelley’s monster, it is safe to say that the surrealist madmen of film
and the mystics of all universes (known and unknown) had been sown to
form Alejandro Jodorowsky. With the mean odors of Sam Peckinpah and
Luis Bunuel, Jodorowsky created a film that would light the midnight
marquee seven nights a week. From December 18, 1970 to the end of June,
1971, El Topo was the must see film at New York’s Village Theatre,
attracting the New York’s art crowd and celebrity artists such as John
Lennon, William Friedkin, and Dennis Hopper.

The film is a western wrapped in the ripping intestines of
spirituality. As the narrative begins, the viewer is placed on a desert
landscape that breathes the drunken breath of John Ford. A man in black
rides upon a dark horse with his naked son, already El Topo gives us
the figurative imagery of innocence and corruption, or good and evil.
The boy is forced to bury a picture of his mother and his first toy;
soon after, his father (the man in black) takes the boy into a village
that has been victim to massacre. White horses lie dead next to
murdered children; intestines and bloody bile pour from the symbolic
purity. The sound of flesh ravaging flies and swinging ropes overwhelms
the soundtrack. As the cinematography takes us through the massacre, we
stop at a man choking on his own dying air; the boy is instructed to
perform a mercy killing, and the rite of passage is complete.

The father and son duo find the leader of the massacre and a
beautifully serene tracking shot ends in a forced suicide. The boy is
replaced with a woman, Marah, and the tale of the man in black—who is
believed to be El Topo—continues.

El Topo quickly becomes a cinematic Tarot card reading, as the
protagonist, El Topo, has to prove his love to Marah by defeating the
best gunmen of the desert. Circles are drawn, while wands are erected.
Sand pit cups are filled with bodies and blood, and characters from
actual Tarot symbols emerge. The catalyst of this journey, Marah, can
represent the Moon Tarot that warns of illusions and the possible loss
of direction. The first master is guarded by a deformation of the
Hermit tarot--A legless torso holds a lantern, as the wand becomes an
armless man of solid structure and bone. They protect the androgynous
master, or High Priestess Tarot, that speaks--with a woman’s
voice--about the power of subconscious awareness.

The other masters and characters of the desert follow with uncanny
parallels to mystic spiritualism and the Tarot. El Topo even projects a
mirror of Christian martyrdom as Marah joins with El Topo’s female
doppelganger and shoots El Topo into a crossless crucifixion of bullets
and bleeding palms. El Topo awakens enlightened within a den of
deformed cave dwellers, who are prisoners of their earthly ceiling.
This last chapter of El Topo shows a wiser protagonist who refuses the
gun as a spiritual wand and problem solver, but the helplessness of the
world proves him wrong.

In the end, El Topo can leave the viewer with a pessimistic
outlook of the world, but optimism can reign if we look at the film as
a eulogy on how the messenger can die, but the message cannot.