Film Review: The Holy Mountain (1973)

A huge step up from Jodorowsky's previous foray into the wildly absurd unknown, slipperier, crazier and more resplendent.

We’ve come to experience reality through the tiny chink in our caverns. Our worldly affairs have narrowed our perception to the diameter of a hair and we can’t even dream seeing past what makes up our insignificant lives. Our utilitarianism has mutated into obsessive consumerism and our society is so hell-bent with money that the only way to rid ourselves of it is if we all become stone broke or millionaires – I’d prefer the latter. Word on the street is that you can get peace and understanding by going on a long quest transformational quest across the land and mind, or for just £10 a hit. But after that, where does that leave us? Are we ready to face the grim, harsh realities that lie in wait for us once our perception is expanded? Does the laughter stop once we realise, we’re the butt of the joke?

These are questions that I’m in no state to answer, especially at this time of night when my demeanour becomes overly crude and I’m all jittery from the caffeine. Come back to me later and I’ll refer you to a freak friend of mine who’ll revolt you enough for you to forget the questions altogether.

When I was a small curious little kid with a nose too big for his good, I was snooping around a video store owned by a friend where I found a strange DVD copy of a film, he thought I’d like. I swiftly went back home and watched it, without my parents’ knowing because I knew they wouldn’t approve, and all I can remember is that by the time the film was over, I was scratching my chin in delightful confusion. 15 years later, on a cold night of what’s supposed to be the start of spring, I rewatched that film. It’s The Holy Mountain (1973)! A person who happens to look a bit too much like Jesus – except that he’s white – goes on a quest with an alchemist and 7 other people who represent the worst of humanity, to find immortality and the face of eternity. Along the way he must purge all that he’s ever known and cleanse himself of the human condition so that he may open the doors of his perception and become one with everything else. Sounds like a typical person going on a spiritual journey adventure doesn’t it? Well yeah, it is, but it presents it in such a mesmerising way and with such acidulous commentary on our world that it’s impossible to resist the temptation of this film. There are a few films which you hope would never end, this is one of those for me. We see our society through the eyes of this film as a society hooked on spectacles. We’re shallow, soulless bunch who are completely stupid for stimulus, consumerism, and short-lived gratification, such commentary would be quite scathing for the average viewer and would drive them away in a rude huff, unable to handle the reality check. This film does it in a manner that isn’t on the nose or condescending, well maybe a tiny bit of condescension but how the hell are we supposed to get the message?

Jodorowsky’s sense of camera, well his sense of filmic language itself, is impeccable. Such exquisite use of the camera with stylistic zooms, pans and tracks that build up a world with depth – ironically portraying a world full of shallow idiots – and throw us right into the deep end of it. In its wilder moods, the camera spins and careens at dizzying speeds, almost as if it’s shaking its junk off and becoming free. Characters are framed in pictureseque ways where I almost don’t want them to move, but when they do, they assume yet another painterly pose.

They’re both fused together, one built around the other. The set design of this film complements the camera like coffee and cigarettes with very whimsically geometric and expressionistic shapes of the stage around which the camera moves in odd dancing ways then swinging into another perspective to show us a whole new dimension of the set. What makes this film shimmer like a jewel in the sun is the colour palette, actually colour palette doesn’t even cut it. The whole rainbow and every band in between are splattered all over the set, I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen for one moment – especially the scenes set in the alchemist’s tower. These psychedelic colours invite the eyes into the soul of the film and through those eyes we see the black and white of it all. The same goes for the costume direction, all the seven companions wear clothes that look as if they’ve been stitched out of their moods. Fabulously textured and tinted clothes make them stand out from one another, until they become united in death and rebirth and become one.

With a poetic script that sound like the passionate ravings of a spiritual philosopher, it tickled my own doomstruck philosophical side and I enjoyed every instance of dialogue, which wasn’t that often as the dialogue is quite sparse through the film, letting the music and framing do the talking. Dynamism and floaty meditative melodies which sound like a crescendo at a Buddhist monastery up in the mountains with heavenly acoustics is what I’d describe the music of this film as. It’s the sort that takes you out of your body through your ears to feel the music rather than the other way around.

The sheer amount of symbolism is staggering, I can’t really encapsulate in words, how much the film is driven by the subtlety of the symbol. Our whole society is now built around a matrix of signs and the film understands that clearly. Like his previous offering, Christian imagery is all over the place, until our kinda central character sheds his personality and the Christian symbolism stops. Looking exactly like Jesus, minus the skin tone, isn’t enough because then I witnessed Jesus commodified, sold and abused in all shapes and descriptions. There’s a wordless character who is covered from head to toe in religious symbols from all over the planet. Need I say more. It’s not just religion that’s symbolised, but the very things that created religion and god, us. Time periods and sensibilities are exemplified in the art direction. To fully break down this film would take hours, and I’m sleepy so I’m cutting myself off before I get carried away.

As I’ve established already, I can’t sing enough encomiums about this damn film and I strongly hold the opinion that it’s Jodorowsky’s best. Until rewatching tonight, I hadn’t even realised that some of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s music videos – especially from Nonagon Infinity – are heavily inspired by this film. Just when I thought I couldn’t love this film, and that band, more. Jodorowsky has mastered his style in this film and he carries it on throughout the rest of his filmography, refining it each time, but here is where you see it become.