Alejandro Jodorowsky, a director that I did not come across before watching “The Holy Mountain” and now I am certain that I do not want to cross his path a lot.
I can not provide a professional film critique as I never took film studies, but as an aware member of the audience and perhaps of the target audience of this film I would say that I did not get it and it left me feeling dumb for a whole day.
IMDB categorizes “The Holy Mountain” as: Comedy/Adventure/Fantasy/Sci-Fi.
Comedy: It is not funny, the sense of humor is too darkly philosophical.
Adventure: Could not catch the escalating thrill and obstacles of an adventure.
Fantasy: perhaps, why not, it is all an incoherent imagination, like a really bad dream.
Sci-Fi: Not nearly, having an orgasm machine does not qualify the film to be Sci-Fi.
This film borrows a little bit from each genre but fails to deliver its full faith to any of them, but to think about it, that’s the point of the film, to be totally pointless.
The Artsy feeling of the film is affected by the 70′s shock-pop-culture, something Gaga would prefer to do these days.
The religious mockery is vague, it did not seem to land on anti-Christianity or anti-Semitic easily.
The only fun part of this pointless film is the mental play Jodorowsky wants to achieve with his audience: If you think you get the symbolism in that scene then I did not mean it in that way or any other way.
Quoting him:
“I ask of film what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs.”Maybe I need to see more of his films so I can have a better depth into his psychological analysis and character development, I was not aware of any in “The Holy Mountain”.
What I came to understand through the forums of IMDB that he is kind of a CULT director, his films are not for everyone, they are mostly midnight shows for the “select” who has the strangest taste in films.Watch it, and let me know what you think.