Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

The Holy Mountain Blu-ray Movie Review

An Alchemical Pilgrim’s Progress

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater April 21, 2011

Picture a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles. Label one “Midnight Movies,” the second “Arthouse Cinema,” and the third “Esoteric Occultism.” Now, at the intersection of these, write “The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky.” This is probably the easiest way to classify the Chilean director’s bizarre underground output, which includes acid-western El Topo, Freudian giallo Santa Sangre, and The Holy Mountain—his most famous film—a cinematic pilgrimage that borrows symbolism from just about every religious tradition imaginable, from Zen Buddhist tea ceremony and the high pomp of Catholicism to Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, and the I Ching. Adding to the density of imagery, Jodorowsky structures the film around the zodiac and the tarot deck, both of which are essentially encyclopedias of arcane symbolism. Don’t worry, the film isn’t as daunting—or as scholarly —as it sounds. The Holy Mountain is meant to be experienced, according to Jodorowsky, not simply interpreted, and the filmmaker has long posited that his movies—so called “psychomagical” shock treatments—are intended to aid his audience toward enlightenment. Ambitious? Yes. Effective? Maybe in the counterculture 1970s, but it all seems a bit hokey today. You may not feel any closer to spiritual nirvana after watching The Holy Mountain, but if you’re a cult film fan who values the surreal and absurd, you’ll be in heaven.

The Thief enters the Rainbow Room.

The film’s first scene sets a deliberate, mystical tone. Jodorowsky himself plays The Alchemist, a black-robed figure who wears a wizardly—and phallic —wide brimmed hat. In what looks like a strange, symmetrical bathhouse, we see him shave the heads of two naked girls, remove their false fingernails, and wipe the make-up off of their faces with a steamed cloth. The implication, if not initially clear, is at least obvious by the end: Holy Mountain is—centrally—about purification. It’s message, if you want to call it that, is very Buddhist: If you want to find peace, happiness, enlightenment—whatever you want to call it—you need to free yourself from egotism, emotional attachments, and materialism.

The film’s protagonist in an unnamed thief (Horacio Selinas), who we meet lying in a puddle of his own urine with flies covering his face and a flower growing out of his palm. Mock crucified and stoned by a gang of children, the thief becomes an immediate Christ figure who comes down off his cross and wanders into town accompanied by a handless, footless dwarf. (Like Todd Browning, of Freaks infamy, Jodorowsky has a thing for the malformed and grotesque.) In the city, American tourists with Super-8 cameras gaggle over the dead bodies of protesters recently gunned down by gas mask-wearing soldiers, and in a magical realist touch straight out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, we see birds fly out of the bullet wound in one of the victim’s chests. If it wasn’t clear already, it is now: we’re in the realm of the surreal, an extension of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s cinematic collaboration, Un Chien Andalou.

After an anti-colonialist interlude involving lizards dressed up as Aztecs and toads as the invading conquistadors—set to a WWII-era German marching song—a group of charlatans in Roman centurion costumes gets the thief drunk, using his passed-out body to make life-sized wax Jesus figures. When the thief wakes up, surrounded and terrified by hundreds of these simulacrums, he destroys them, eats the face off of one—you can tell it’s actually made of marzipan—and flees outside, where he finds a crowd gathered around an enormous tower with a single circular entrance at the very top. The thief scales the tower with the help of a giant golden fishhook, bursting into the Alchemist’s rainbow-colored chambers with no idea what to expect. And here’s where the film begins to get weird.

Newly apprenticed to the Alchemist, the Thief undergoes a series of rituals intended to provide spiritual instruction. In one, he’s asked to defecate in a pot, and the Alchemist, through his arcane art, turns the stool sample into a 24-karat turd. There’s a point to this, and it distills the film’s theme: “You are excrement,” says the Alchemist. “[But] you can change yourself into gold.” From here, in a progression of vignettes, we’re introduced to seven rich and powerful individuals—each corresponding to a planet—who will accompany the thief on his quest for enlightenment. Each scene is a savagely satirical indictment of some aspect of Western culture, and the film is at its funniest here. The owner of a cosmetics company makes ridiculous accessories that appeal to human vanity. An art dealer has his own factory—a stab at Warhol, perhaps—that churns out prints made from paint-splattered buttocks. There’s an incestuous financial advisor with an old whore for a mom and a toy maker who conditions Chilean children to hate their Peruvian neighbors. An architect plans a housing complex made of coffins, a police chief cuts off and collects the testicles of his underlings, and a weapons dealer makes Buddhist pistols and pump-action shotgun/guitar combos. These seven agree to give up their worldly possessions and follow the Alchemist up the Holy Mountain, where they’ve been promised to find immortality. The Alchemist instructs them to “cease as individuals and become a collective being,” and their journey together becomes a process of stripping themselves of their selves.

This last act feels like a New Age summer camp for hippies, but Jodorowsky’s intentions are so earnest, and his fourth-wall-breaking conclusion so joyful—he basically commands us to forget the movie, because “real life awaits us”—that it’s hard not to get caught up in the patchouli-scented, LSD-laced vibe. The film is indeed a trip in every sense of the word, and you could easily read it as the cinematic representation of a drug-assisted hallucination or astral-plane-hopping spiritual experience. What elevates The Holy Mountain over other similar films from the psychedelic ‘70s, however, is how crammed it is with ideas, social and spiritual. Jodorowsky’s detractors may resort to the old “weirdness for the sake of weirdness” claim, but there’s definitely a method to the director’s mystical, symbol-laden madness. He’s clearly well versed in world religion and magical traditions, and in interviews and commentaries he comes across as thoughtful and passionate about what he does. I don’t think he’d ever explicitly compare himself to a Bodhisattva—a being who forgoes nirvana to stay in the human world and help others attain enlightenment—but he clearly believes his existential purpose is to change lives through his own amalgamated spiritual system, which he calls “psychoshamanism.” You might say he’s a “cult” director in more ways than one, but you don’t have to buy into his wacky worldview to enjoy his enigmatic, neo-surrealist films, of which The Holy Mountain is arguably the best.

The Holy Mountain Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

With the original negatives and various source prints in poor condition, The Holy Mountain was subject to an extensive, high-definition, director- approved restoration in 2005-2006. The Blu-ray's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer has been sourced from this remaster—which was also used for the film's 2007 DVD release—and in most respects it makes for a revelatory advance in picture quality. The Blu-ray bests the DVD in all objectively measurable and subjectively eye-balled categories. While there are, and have always been some soft shots, clarity is much improved, revealing the fine detail in Jodorowsky's absurdist compositions. Just examine the texture of the marzipan Christ face as the thief bites into it. Color is also significantly bolstered— see the Alchemist's "rainbow" chamber—and although blacks seem a bit hazy at times, this appears to be an attempt to preserve some of the previously lost shadow detail. Beyond a few flecks, small debris, and occasional color strobing, there's no major print damage.

However, the upgrade to Blu-ray also reveals traces of the restoration process that weren't as visible in standard definition. For instance, noise reduction has been applied somewhat unevenly; there are sections of the film that exhibit a natural-looking grain structure, but other scenes have that frozen, wiped quality that usually accompanies DNR. Thankfully, though, we're never subjected to any overt abuses of the technique—unlike the recent Predator re-release, the actors here aren't transformed into shiny, waxy, plasticine model versions of themselves. The other issues are small, but worth mentioning. There are some slight halos around certain outlines, suggesting edge enhancement, and you'll occasionally spot some digital-ish artifacts in flat expanses of color, like the blue sky above the mountain. Certain hues also seem artificially oversaturated—in one shot, the grass appears almost neon green. The transfer/restoration isn't perfect, but if you've ever suffered through a VHS bootleg of the film, you'll be glad that you can finally see The Holy Mountain in a state closer to its intended glory.

The Holy Mountain Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Along with receiving a visual overhaul, the film also had its original mono soundtrack expanded into a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix. The surround channels are only implemented subtly, but I can honestly say it adds to the experience. The deep shimmer of a struck gong reverberates in the space behind your head, Tibetan throat singing eerily fills the soundfield, and the film's kooky soundtrack—which runs the gamut from rock to lounge jazz to atonal ambience—is quietly bled into the rear speakers. It's important to note that this is not a conventional mix by any means. Most of the dialogue was dubbed in after filming—while intelligible throughout, it often has a thin, tinny quality—and the effects are noticeably weak, lacking any substantial low-end foundation. Gunshots emit with a paltry ping and explosions have no heft whatsoever. Still, this is the way the film has always sounded, and without a significant amount of re-recording and remixing, I don't think it could ever get much better. This is one of those tracks that you just have to accept as-is, while appreciating the work the film's restorers put into cleaning up the audio. Aside from some mild hissing on occasion, and music that can sound a bit brash, there's really nothing here that would qualify as a distraction.

The Holy Mountain Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary by Alejandro Jodorowsky: The Holy Mountain isn't nearly as complicated and seemingly incomprehensible as, say, James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, but this commentary by Jodorowsky is much appreciated as a kind of skeleton key to unlock the film's complex visual symbolism. Jodorowsky spends a lot of time pointing out the meanings and origins of certain images, and he's quite upfront about discussing the film's spiritual and satirical themes. Of course, trivia and "making of" anecdotes make their way into the track as well, including an admission that The Beatles' George Harrison was set to play the Thief, but backed out when he learned he would have to show his anus on screen. This is a must-listen for fans of the film. In Spanish, with English subtitles.
• Deleted Scenes with Commentary (1080i, 5:41): A handful of excised scenes, all taken from the last, "mountain" section of the film. Jodorowsky explains the context for each, and the most interesting revelation here is that he wanted to end the film with an actual birth scene, but the pregnant woman who was cast backed out at the last minute. Spanish, with English subs.
• The Tarot (1080i, 7:53): Here, Jodorowsky explains his lifelong fascination with tarot and details how he came to restore the Marseille deck —believed to be the source of all tarot traditions, dating back to the 1400s. At the end, he breaks down the meanings of the individual cards.
• Restoration Process (1080i, 5:32): Film preservationist Joe Burn discusses the complicated process of digitally restoring the film.
• Photos and Script (1080i, 4:06): A slide show displaying excerpts from the script, handwritten notes, and on-set Polaroids.
• Original Trailer (1080i, 2:28)

The Holy Mountain Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Like a cross between a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel and the Illuminatus! trilogy, Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain is a mystical, magical realism-inspired experience that's strange, wonderful, and truly unforgettable. We're lucky we can even see it. The film's producer, Beatles's manager Allen Klein, withheld the film from distribution for thirty years after Jodorowsky broke his contract with ABKCO, but the two reconciled a few years back, leading to the release of the film on DVD, and now, on Blu-ray, where it looks better than it ever has. If you're a connoisseur of the cult, psychedelic, or bizarre, Holy Mountain belongs in your collection immediately. Highly recommended!