The Holy Mountain (1973)
Special Alejandro Jodorowsky
The Alchemy of Jodorowsky:

The Holy Mountain (1973)

Hoezo in KINO

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s mystical magnum opus The Holy Mountain firmly established the Chilean filmmaker as an auteur of Surrealist Cinema and sparked serious controversy at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival due to its sacrilegious imagery and raw existential symbolism. In this mystical masterpiece Jodorowsky himself plays The Alchemist, a guru who guides a troupe of pilgrims, each representing the planets in the solar system, on a magical quest to Lotus Island where they must ascend the Holy Mountain in search of spiritual enlightenment. The Holy Mountain takes Jodorowsky’s psychedelic allegorical mastery to another level. Grotesque, transgressive and hypnotizing, it remains a mind-bending excursion into the meaning of earthly wealth and immortality and still serves as a counter-cultural influence on artists as diverse as Peter Gabriel, Erykah Badu and Marina Abramovic, as well as filmmakers such as David Lynch and Nicolas Winding Refn.

Credits

Regie
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Cast
Alejandro Jodorowsky, Horacio Salinas, Zamira Saunders
Genre
drama
Speelduur
114 minuten
Land
Mexico
Taal
Spaand
Ondertiteling
Engels

Storyline

A Mexican master leads a Christ figure and other disciples to a mountain of immortal wise men. The scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s flood of sacrilegious imagery and existential symbolism in The Holy Mountain is a spiritual quest for enlightenment pitting illusion against truth. The Alchemist (Jodorowsky) assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. The occult adept’s intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.