didgeridoo
19-10-2007, 05:00 PM
El Topo (The Mole)
http://www.britfilms.tv/images/reviews/El%20Topo.jpg
EL TOPO is my favorite of Jodorowsky's films for its highly personal, interior and symbolist vision. The frist time I saw this film back in the seventies, I was shocked by the violence and couldn't get past seeing the film from my literalist mindset. I walked out of the theatre feleing sick and disgusted.
I told a friend of mine, someone I saw as wider than myself, about my experience. He suggested that I see the film, again, but not take anything literally. He asked me to view every scene as a symbolist ritual representing archetypal forces at work in a larger arrangement of The Journey archetype colliding with The Crucifixion archetype.
The second time I saw EL TOPO (through this symbolist framework), I saw an entirely different film. I saw a masterpiece of cabalistic cinema.
Take the four master gunfighters, for example, that El Topo had to slay. I saw them as symbolic of four brains or intelligences: Physical (the yogi), Emotional (the cage-maker), Intellectual (the rabbit farmer) and Spiritual (the old goofy guy). Killing the first three resulted in spiritual suicide (the old goofy guy killed himself) and the beginnning of his underworld initiation into rebirth.
I am curious to find out if and how others may have viewed EL TOPO from a non-literalist, more symbolic vantage and what they saw as a result of making this perceptual shift.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
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YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
http://www.britfilms.tv/images/reviews/El%20Topo.jpg
EL TOPO is my favorite of Jodorowsky's films for its highly personal, interior and symbolist vision. The frist time I saw this film back in the seventies, I was shocked by the violence and couldn't get past seeing the film from my literalist mindset. I walked out of the theatre feleing sick and disgusted.
I told a friend of mine, someone I saw as wider than myself, about my experience. He suggested that I see the film, again, but not take anything literally. He asked me to view every scene as a symbolist ritual representing archetypal forces at work in a larger arrangement of The Journey archetype colliding with The Crucifixion archetype.
The second time I saw EL TOPO (through this symbolist framework), I saw an entirely different film. I saw a masterpiece of cabalistic cinema.
Take the four master gunfighters, for example, that El Topo had to slay. I saw them as symbolic of four brains or intelligences: Physical (the yogi), Emotional (the cage-maker), Intellectual (the rabbit farmer) and Spiritual (the old goofy guy). Killing the first three resulted in spiritual suicide (the old goofy guy killed himself) and the beginnning of his underworld initiation into rebirth.
I am curious to find out if and how others may have viewed EL TOPO from a non-literalist, more symbolic vantage and what they saw as a result of making this perceptual shift.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.