“If you are great, El Topo is a great film. If you are limited, El Topo is limited,” director Alejandro Jodorowsky said of his epic spaghetti-western, whose wide-scale distribution is owed largely to the efforts of John Lennon. Indeed, those who are willing to work out its numerous allegories will behold a masterpiece of sociopolitical satire and theosophical meditation.
The film’s eponymous gun-toting protagonist, played by Jodorowsky himself, travels across the desert in his quest for enlightenment, dueling four masters — a yogi-like bullet-dodger, a mama’s boy who builds toothpick pyramids, a rabbit farmer and a grey-haired sage wielding a butterfly net.
The film is saturated with religious symbolism: the defeated black-clad cowboy, wounded with the stigmata, is reborn to become the savior of a race of subterranean mutants and dwarves. The surreal imagery is intoxicating; El Topo takes viewers on a psychedelic journey through a bizarre and fantastic world. Though previously only available as a bootleg, the film’s DVD release last spring has made this cult classic finally accessible to all.
