Movies - El Topo

	Movies - El Topo

El Topo ("The Mole") is a 1970 violent allegorical, cult western movie and underground film, directed by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky. Characterized by its bizarre characters and occurrences, use of maimed and dwarf performers, and heavy doses of Christian symbolism and Eastern philosophy, the film is about the eponymous character's search for meaning in his life.

Plot

The movie takes place in two parts. The first half, in an unnamed desert, involves the title character's journey with his young son to defeat the four great masters of pistol duelling. As El Topo encounters each of the first three masters, the master teaches El Topo a lesson and they then duel, in which El Topo cheats every time. The final master kills himself, in a demonstration of the unimportance of life. The first half ends with El Topo's betrayal and near-murder.

The second half of the movie takes place years later, after El Topo is rescued by a band of deformed outcasts, saving him from death. The outcasts take El Topo to their underground community, where he, comatose, meditates on the four lessons for many years. When he awakes, he is "born again" with the help of the outcasts, and goes on a quest to free them from their subterranean prison.

With the help of his dwarf girlfriend and his full-grown son, El Topo digs an exit out of the cave, only to see the others of his community murdered by cultists from a nearby town. In a rage, El Topo kills them all, then pours gasoline on himself and sets himself on fire, as he has learned all he can about life.

El Topo's son and girlfriend survive the ordeal and make a grave for his remains, which later becomes a beehive full of honey (This being a religious symbol for a holy man). It is speculated that El Topo was to be reincarnated, through his pregnant girlfriend, in the planned, but unrealized, sequel El Toro (due to legal issue with the original distributors, however the title has changed to Abelcain in 2005, in which Marilyn Manson will be starring in it).

Interpretation

The film is sometimes interpreted as a metaphor for the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, the four duelists representing the four great prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel) of the Old Testament and El Topo himself representing Jesus Christ.

In an animated introductory sequence, "The Mole" is directly explained to be one who has experienced the process described in the Platonic allegory of the cave, found in Plato's The Republic (dialogue).

The final scene where El Topo burned himself bears a similar imaginery to the photo of a Buddhist monk who burned himself outside the U.S Embassy, during the Vietnam War as a form of protest.

Other

John Lennon
had named El Topo his favorite movie.

The Holy Mountain

was Jodorowsky's followup to El Topo

Sequel

Abelcain
(2005)

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for El Topo ]

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Movies - El Topo

Plot

Interpretation

Other

Sequel

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