El Topo (1970)

• Year: 1970
• Released: 15 Apr 1971
• Country: Mexico
• Adwords: 4 wins & 3 nominations
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067866/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/el_topo
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/el-topo
• Available in: 720p, 1080p, 2160p
• Language: Spanish
• MPA Rating: Not Rated
• Genre: Drama, Western
• Runtime: 125 min
• Writer: Alejandro Jodorowsky
• Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky
• Cast: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, José Legarreta
• Keywords: cult film, desert, journey, surreal, mass murder,

	7.2/10
	65/100
	80% – Critics
	84% – Audience

El Topo Storyline

El Topo decides to confront warrior masters on a transformative desert journey he begins with his six-year-old son, who must bury his childhood totems to become a man. El Topo (the mole) claims to be God, while dressed as a gun-slinger in black, riding a horse through a mystical landscape strewn with American Western and ancient Eastern religious symbols. Bandits slaughtered a village on his path, so El Topo avenges the massacred, then forcibly takes their leader’s woman Mara as his. El Topo’s surreal way is bloody, sexual and self-reflective, musing of his own demons, as he tries to vanquish those he encounters.

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El Topo Movie Reviews

I am amazed at all the positive reviews this film has received.

Well, that’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back. Because I have seen and reviewed so many films, I felt like sooner or later I had to get to EL TOPO. It’s one of those legendary films that cinephiles have talked about for years, so I reluctantly rented it. Sadly, I could have watched a Pauly Shore or Jonas Brothers movie instead–that’s how much I hated EL TOPO.

Where do I begin? With most movies I dislike, I try to look at what, specifically, I didn’t like as well as try to find some positives. However, with EL TOPO, I hated everything about the film and the only positives are that it wasn’t one minute longer and the film’s creator has been unable to do a sequel due to difficulty with financing (ain’t that a big surprise). Although the midnight movie crowd has adored this film, it is simply nihilistic and nasty. It’s full of blasphemous imagery, nudity, buckets of blood, killing of the handicapped for kicks, countless animals brutally slaughtered for the film and the unrelentingly depressing and nonsensical nature of the film–and these elements (plus many more) put together make this a terrible and rather evil film. I am sure that Jodorowsky wanted to offend and provoke the audience, but with so much provocation coming non-stop, it all just got very, very boring after a short time. Imagine if now, in the more permissive 21st century, if the followup film were made. What could Jodorowsky do to top EL TOPO—personally come to the theater and kill patrons or have sex with animals?! I mean, how can you top EL TOPO for depravity?! I think had this film been made in a different time, it would have totally bombed. But, in 1970, the New Age guru-inspired plot elements, the widespread use of hallucinogens and a desire for something different converged to make this film work for a small fringe element. Otherwise, I can’t see any normal person bothering with such a self-indulgent “film”.

Avoid this like the plague unless you think seeing rotting, eviscerated animals is art! I mean, think about it–donkeys and horses were killed and gutted (with the entrails hanging out) and dozens of bunnies and assorted other creatures were also killed for our entertainment! And, while you are at it, there were simulated rapes, killing of the handicapped and the sodomizing priests!!! Isn’t there sometimes SOMETHING that the film community might consider wrong?! Nah,…I guess not.

Style over substance

Yeah, I didn’t think much of this surrealist western, even though I was prepared to like it and WANTED to like it was I watched. By the end I couldn’t help but feel it’s another case of “the emperor’s new clothes” in terms of style over substance, and the sum of the whole ending up much less than the individual parts.

The story starts out straightforward enough, with a distinctive gunslinger discovering the aftermath of a massacre and vowing to take revenge on the outlaws responsible. Once that story is out of the way, though, it starts getting weirder and weirder, almost existentialist, as the gunslinger has encounters with a series of deity-like characters in the desert and undergoes a religiously significant transformation. By the end, I was quite frankly bored.

Here’s the good stuff: Jodorowsky’s cinematography, which is glorious. EL TOPO is vibrant-looking and colourful throughout, and I love the use of surreal imagery which really works. There are poignant scenes and flashes of Peckinpah-style ultra-violence and the contrasting elements are mixed together well. It’s just the script, really, which lets it down, becoming too abstract; I always prefer a more concrete narrative as a basis on which to pin the more fantastic elements, but EL TOPO is lacking such a construct and at times just seems to be being made up as it goes along.

It’s all about the animals

I know that explaining why you rate something may be overrated, but I’m giving it a shot for those interested and not just liking or disliking that I gave this a 6. As I already hinted at in the summary line, it is about the animals in here in general and the bunnies in particular! The fact that actual animals died in the making of this. Now that is one thing … but the fact that they died because of the heat they were exposed to … Jodorowsky himself says he wouldn’t be doing this nowadays and thought back then that the sacrifice was something natural/necessary. Now as a big friend of animals but even more so of bunnies I am almost baffled by myself not giving this an even lower vote, but I did try to take into account that he saw the error of his way and the rest of the movie.

And now we can dive into that: a movie that seems to be divided into smaller parts. Which also is sort of true, because apparently Jodorowsky would not have gotten away with the things he depicts here, if he had claimed and told authorities back then what he was up to. Short movies on the other hand could be made at any point. Jodorowsky also plays the main role, which you may or may not appreciate. I’d say about 3/4 of the movie work very well … and then you get an end part that seems completely detached from the rest.

Then again this is Jodorowsky, so while the shooting short movies may be one “excuse”, the other explanation would just be he did his own thing and tried things out … anything spiritual that came to mind – his mind that is. Although as a viewer you are encouraged to think a lot … you have to connect the dots … and/or listen to his interviews/audio commentaries to find out what he actually meant to tell us there. Some symbolism is quite easy to decrypt … other things not so much. Even some of his fans have a different view on what it means than the main man himself – which in now way is or has to be something bad.

The movie is quite infamous for being his most bloody one yet – and it is true, if you are easily offended … it is probably better if you do not watch this at all. Then there is also nudity and a lot of weird characters doing weird things … symbolically speaking and all that. Let’s just say you have to be in the right frame of mind. And seeing a kid being naked … now the kid himself (interviewed for the disc/company I bought) was not scarred or at least seem to have grown up more than ok. That doesn’t mean that some people won’t have issues with that though … kind of like me being really mad about the bunnies …