Santa Sangre is the most accessible film of Jodorowsky's that I've seen so far, following an almost entirely coherent narrative. Imagine that! That's not to say he doesn't find room for an elephant funeral that ends with the corpse being torn trunk from tail by starving villagers, or a pack of young men with Downs Syndrome play-acting at snorting cocaine and pawing at an obese prostitute, or a graveyard full of naked brides and a tattooed ghost-horse.
It's just to say that he finds a way to navigate his beautifully obscene surrealism through characters whose motivations never become a mystic question mark. We get who these people are pretty clearly, and what drives them into the insane places they land. That's not meant as a slight against something as mystifying (and glorious) as Holy Mountain, but where that film dazed me into a numb receptive state where I just let the images wash over me, I was actually able to get swept up in an emotional way with the story of SS. (pics via)
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It's just to say that he finds a way to navigate his beautifully obscene surrealism through characters whose motivations never become a mystic question mark. We get who these people are pretty clearly, and what drives them into the insane places they land. That's not meant as a slight against something as mystifying (and glorious) as Holy Mountain, but where that film dazed me into a numb receptive state where I just let the images wash over me, I was actually able to get swept up in an emotional way with the story of SS. (pics via)
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2 comments:
This movie scared the BEJESUS out of me when I saw it in 89. The ear, the ear! After years of it haunting me, I finally got up the courage to rent it (on videotape?!?) with a boyfriend. His comment when it was over, "That's not scary. It's just like Almodovar remade Psycho." And its terrifying spell was broken.
That's actually a nice way of describing the film. It is totally like Almodovar remaking Psycho.
And that's funny you mention the ear scene - while I was watching the movie my boyfriend wandered through the room right during that and stopped dead in his tracks and said "YES" approvingly. He's awesome.
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