Rating of
4/4
"Real life awaits us".
Matthew Brady - wrote on 10/25/15
The Alchemist: "We began in a fairytale and we came to life, but is this life reality? No. It is a film. We are images, dreams, photographs. We must not stay here. Prisoners! We shall break the illusion. This is magic! Goodbye to the Holy Mountain. Real life awaits us".
The story is about a Christlike figure wanders through bizarre, grotesque scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious imagery. He meets a mystical guide who introduces him to seven wealthy and powerful individuals, each representing a planet in the solar system. These seven, along with the protagonist, the guide and the guide's assistant, divest themselves of their worldly goods and form a group of nine who will seek out the Holy Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there and become immortal.
The Holy Mountain is one of those movies that not everyone is going to like, as through out the years the movie has been a mix bag for a lot of people. Many called the movie "A pretentious arty film, with no plot and nothing to gaps on to". If you don't like this movie then that's fine, I mean everyone has different taste in movies and not everyone can like the same thing as other people because that will be quite dull. But in my personal opinion, I love The Holy Mountain and I would actually rank it up as one of the best movie I've seen in years.
Alejandro Jodorowsky (The director of the movie) is what a call a "spiritual director", and what I mean is that Alejandro is a very spiritual person and I'm not such a spiritual person myself but I do admire his work. Alejandro Jodorowsky work of art is so open and so transparent that it makes his movies truly unique to watch, and that's why I think The Holy Mountain is a great way to start watching Alejandro films so you can get use to he's style of film making. Everything Alejandro Jodorowsky puts into his art as a personal sense of purpose in them and the ideas he's got isn't difficult to make out in each scene of the movie. The Holy Mountain is a work of art and Alejandro Jodorowsky directing is freaking superb.
What I love about The Holy Mountain is how every single scene in this film is so true on reality and how detailed the movie is, and all of that is shown by Alejandro artistic look on life. The movie is absolutely absurd and what I mean is without spoiling anything; these a scene where a women is sitting on this super tall toilet and I'm not going to break it down like most people have by saying, "The toilet is suppose to represent her as an upper class citizen to everyone", no, what the movie is trying to get across (In my opinion) is how absurd it is and to make you think twice about the things we take for granted, I mean just look at everything that's still current in present day life, back in the sixties, seventies and eighties are still present today and all the things we do are suppose to me you think "Wow, that's retarded", and the point of the movie is to look at all the things that have become normality makes you realize it's absurd.
These a lot that you can interpret in terms of statements that's in the movie like politics, religion and social life, and the movie says so much about every issue and it's so true and timeless. Every single second of the movie is making a statement and the movie has some much to say that it doesn't waste it's time doing so.
The soundtrack in this movie is one of the best soundtracks I've ever listened to. Alejandro Jordorowsky, Don Cherry, Ron Frangipane and Andrew Arnold were the composers and I thought they did a magnificent job. The music in the movie really dose help on what type of emotion your suppose to be getting from the scene. Once you watch it a few times and you understand everything that's going to happen in the scene and you get the music in your head at the same time really adds to the experience, well it did for me.
Now for the problems: I have none.
Overall The Holy Mountain is a fantastic movie that really connected with me as a viewer. The movie never sloppily pretends to be doing anything different; all of it is completely self-ware of itself. The movie isn't for everyone so if you didn't like this movie then that's totally fine, but I freaking love this movie.
