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Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Watch Movies Online: Jodorowsky's El Topo

By Mitchell Calhoun

El Topo is really a truly one of a kind western film, completely unlike anything you've seen before. It's hard to know where to begin. Next time you want to watch movies online, just give El Topo a try and see what you think.

The film focuses on a gunfighter named El Topo. We open on him and his son in the desert. El Topo has the child bury a picture of his mother who was murdered, symbolically burying his own childhood and innocence and becoming a man, on this mission with his father for revenge on the people who destroyed their family. They trek across the desert in search of blood.

After attaining revenge, the two go their separate ways. El Topo leaves the boy in the hands of the church while leaving with his new lover. His girlfriend insists that he trek through the desert and kill the top four killers, and only then will she be able to love him, as she can only love the strongest men. The two wander the desert for several years, taking out the killers one by one.

Each of the four killers is a fascinating character. One is attended to by a pair of handicapped people. One with no legs, who sits on the shoulders of one with no arms. Another of the killers is an old man who deflects bullets with a butterfly net, while another is a strong man who is capable of building incredibly delicate, ornate objects out of toothpicks.

Eventually, El Topo must search for redemption after his girlfriend betrays him, putting him in a coma. He stays in a mountain for several years and wakes up to don a priestly robe and shave his head and become a saint. He hopes to repent for his sinful past, but must first find the capacity for forgiveness within his own soul.

Topo eventually reunites with his adult son, and learns that putting him in the church's hands did not, in fact, spare him a life of difficulties, and that challenges and violence will hound you no matter who you are or what your background.

The film touches on symbolism from just about every major religion in the history of mankind, from Buddhism to Catholicism to Hinduism. The end result is a film where the symbolism is really an all new beast, in a sense. Because the symbolism draws from so many sources, it's impossible for anybody but the film's director to understand them completely, so it really winds up feeling like a whole new religious background invented from the ground up.

El Topo is perhaps one of the most surreal and strange films of any genre. It will, all at once, shock you and uplift you, repulse and enlighten you, and it will leave you feeling positive, confused, and curious. It's a rare film that asks more questions of the universe than it is capable of answering. Jodorowsky has always been one of the strangest directors of all time, and this may just be his crowning masterpiece.

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