What's it all about, Alejandro? - Film - Arts - Evening Standard
       

What's it all about, Alejandro?

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Alejandro Jodorowsky was a darling of the Seventies counterculture, and more than a bit of a magician as a film-maker (he once did my Tarot reading - I wish I could remember what he predicted).

In his cult 1970 Mexican Western, El Topo, re-released this week, the saintly gunslinger, played by the director himself (he also wrote the screenplay and the score) rides into a village where there has been a massacre and sorts things out.

If Sergio Leone heightened the basics of the western, Jodorowsky buries them in surrealism. It has often been said that you have to be under the influence to appreciate his work best, and it does help. Then you can just bask in the extraordinary imagery and not worry about what it all means.

El Topo
Cert: 18

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