Fando y Lis

"Fando & Lis" is Alejandro Jodorowsky's first full length feature film. Like the 1930 film "L Age D Or", the 1967 premier at the Acapulco film festival in Mexico led to riots. The images shocked many viewers and Jodorowsky had to flee for his life. The film's story concerns Fando and his crippled girlfriend Lis. Fando is very cruel, but sometimes sympathetic. He pushes Lis around in a cart through many strange and surreal scenarios. We also witness flashbacks of Lis as a child loosing her innocents to the corruption of adults. Fando has flashbacks of his father and the soldiers which took his dad away from him. For the two main characters, it's a bizarre world gone mad. Fando & Lis are on a journey to the miraculous city of Tar. Lis is convinced she'll be healed of her physical disorder and able to walk again. This film is based on a short play by Fernado Arrabal. and at time feels like a follow up to the later filmed "Viva la Muerte". Although shot in B&W viewers are treated to many bizarre images including; a burning piano, body painting, drag queens, mud people and other assorted strangeness. "Fando & Lis" holds its place in the hall of fame of weird films. You must see it to believe it.

Mention the name Alexandro Jodorowsky wherever two or more film buffs are gathered and a fight is only minutes away. Some argue that he is a latter day Bunuel whose non-linear style of storytelling illustrates the falsities and hypocrasies of the ruling class while others declare that he is a talentless poseur who incorporates his own LSD inspired ramblings into his scripts and "non linear" is just a fancy way of saying his plots make no sense.

Many directors have woven the search for the Meaning of Life into their plots. Ingmar Bergman, David Lynch, Carl Dreyer and Luis Bunuel among them especially. The thing about Jodorowsky is not that his characters are looking for the meaning OF life, rather they are seeking to give meaning TO their lives. This is not wrong per se, but the problem is the characters in EL TOPO, THE HOLY MOUNTAIN and even FANDO AND LIS all find what they are seeking, and that is where the problems begin, not end. While having a goal and dedicating your life to it is laudible in itself, once you have satisfied that goal where do you go? Is Life still meaningful once you have solved Meaning of same? Not to reveal the ending of any of these movies but: There are disastrous results for everyone in these pictures once they reach their goal . . .which turns out to be not what they expected anyway.

Fando and his crippled girlfriend Lis are on a journey to the legendary magical city of Tar where, both believe, Lis will be able to walk and all their problems will be solved. Along the way they meet all sorts of odd characters (the only kind who inhabit the Jodorowsky universe) and Fando tries to leave several times only to return repentant. Jodorowsky seems to share a dislike of the upper classes of society with Bunuel. The representatives of the upper crust we encounter are narrow minded ineffectual idiots anxious to maintain the status quo because that is the only life they know and they are unwilling to accept change (think about the townsfolk in EL TOPO and compare them to the rich people in VIRIDIANA).

Tar may be no more real than El Dorado or Atlantis but as long as they are actively involved in searching for it, Fando and Lis's live's have meaning. The question ultimately put before them and, by proxy, also before us is this: Is the realisation of this goal worth it? And what happens if we arrive at the wrong answer? Of course with Jodorowsky the wrong answer is the only one anyone ever seems to reach, EL TOPO being the prime example of this. FANDO AND LIS reaches a climax which, while not wholly unexpected, is no less heartbreaking because we saw it coming.

This film was withdrawn for several film festivals worldwide and allegedly caused riots when it was shown in Brazil. It was withdrawn from distribution for many years by Jodorowsky himself but is now available on videocassette and DVD. So is this man an unsung genius? You figure it out, I'm going home.

I may be rewarded by his later films — his later work is highly recommended — but this one has no merit for me. I suppose everyone who comments on this should give some registration. For me Bunuel and Barney aren't worth it (except for a few brilliant sequences) while Greenaway and Madden are anchors for imaginative possibilities.

This was his first film after an intensive career in alternative theater. He was in the self- described surreal and anarchy theatrical movements. They had a sort of power because the performers were physically there. If they smeared feces, the audience was involved in ways completely unreproducible in film. That sort of theater can be built on confrontation, negation, disorder alone.

I believe there is an analogue in film. Jack Smith perhaps. But at this point in his career, Jodorowsky didn't understand the difference and so far as he was concerned, commitment was enough.

Well, it ain't. Not for this viewer.

There's a porn film based on some of the more effective scenes here: "Through the Looking- glass." Its a superior film.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

I think Fando and Lis is a masterpiece, and one of the least pretentious films I've seen. As it's 2 am and I've just watched it, I am not in a position to be articulate, but I'll sum up my reasons in the following, then come back in a few days and further the commentary.

1. I was never once bored. 2. How the hell did the director get this made, and have all the actors and extras participate in what to them must have seemed embarrassing and weird sacrilege? 3. It was epic poetic fantasy, using creative theatrical games, fresh play of props and brilliant mise en scene - tapping into all kinds of primal emotions, fears and desires. 4. He makes good the limits of the medium. Even the high contrast black-and- white served its purpose; when Fando tries to convince Lis there are flowers, the surrounding many stones and bric-a-brac suggest flowers to the viewer. Where faded acoustics must have reigned given the budget and desert landscape, he fills the soundtrack with compelling auditory images. 5. It's a combination of Fellini's 81/2 (the bewildered director as lover) and La Strada, but even more personal; with more guts; rawer, fresher. 6. Who could deny the plaintively lovely Lis? The forlorn fawning seductress? And wasn't Fando a charming and silly chap, full of fondness for living when he wasn't cast in the role of the brute? And wasn't their chemistry palpable?

Above all, I was moved. I recognized it both as a simple love story toting the truism that love has no road map, and a cry from the wilderness. It was authentic scream of a soul to FEEL the experience of living, good and bad. Watch this film when you're lost - when your heart aches with unfulfilled desires - you want your dead parents back or the lover you mistreated. Watch it then. You'll know what the hell it's about.

The sad fact is that nobody makes movies like this anymore. Surrealism is dead and has been replaced by so-called "reality-based TV". Seeing FANDO & LIS over thirty years later, one realizes the power Jodorowsky has to teach a new generation how it's done - for the pendulum is sure to swing back in surrealism's favor any day now. Listen to the audio commentary and learn how to use symbolism effectively. Nobody does it better. The scene in the graveyard alone is a classic. As for shock value, this was the UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1928 by Luis Bunuel & Savador Dali) of it's day. Yes, like its predecessor, FANDO Y LIS caused riots when first screened and it's easy to see why. Audiences are still being challenged by it. This is the first "midnight movie" made before the term was even coined. There is only one way to describe it: a brilliantly shocking masterpiece.