The Dance Of Reality
Jodorowsky keeps it magic-real...
Twenty-three years is a long time between films. Unless of course you’re shaman-like director Alejandro Jodorowsky, for whom the concept of linear time is probably some kind of laughable bauble, and who surely cares not a fig for the keepyuppy vulgarities of the movie business. Now in his 85th year, the legendary provocateurextraordinaire returns with an intensely personal, darkly surreal and occasionally brutal coming-of-age drama, drawing on his own troubled boyhood in 1930s Chile.
Shot in his coastal hometown of Tocopilla, a place “torn to shreds by the sun”, this is recognisably Jodorowsky country from the get-go: equal parts realist, symbolist and absurdist (dogs in kangaroo costumes and healing urine, anyone?), and occupied by a Fellini-esque cast of clowns, hookers, gurus, amputees and Nazis. And the benignly smiling director himself, gliding through the fourth wall like some snow-bearded guardian angel to comfort his younger iteration.
It’s art therapy, essentially: as evinced by the likes of his peyote-soaked Western, El Topo, and jaw-dropping Mexican-gothic horror Santa Sangre, the bloke’s clearly been beset by some rather fascinating ‘issues’. Mainly, this is an attempt to confront the memory of his monstrously abusive father – as well as a mythologizing stab at redeeming him, through parable. It’ll have Freudians in raptures: Jodorowsky’s real-life son Brontis effectively plays his own grandfather – a cold, militant Stalinist, whose cruelty is offset by his kindly wife (Pamela Flores), eternally bursting out of her dress.And fortunately for us, it is she who teaches little Alejandro the value and uses of imagination. “Embrace the illusion”? You bet. THE VERDICT The elusive icon of cult cinema proves there’s life in the old dog yet with this bizarre yet surprisingly warm and moving meditation on youth, regret and redemption. › Certificate 18 Director Alejandro Jodorowsky Starring Brontis Jodorowsky, Pamela Flores, Jeremias Herskovitz, Alejandro Jodorowsky Screenplay Alejandro Jodorowsky Distributor Curzon Artificial Eye Running time 133 mins