Fando y Lis

Fando and Lis depart in search of the magic City of Tar, which will probably offer a cure to Lis' legs in order to make her walk again, aside from granting eternal happiness to both of them. The Search: An early thematic goal to the director's later midnight classics El Topo and The Holy Mountain. Scandalous, and too sacrilegious for the audience at the Acapulco Film Festival, the film was subsequently dropped by the distributor in 1968. Fando and Lis remained obscure for over 30 years.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's long-lost feature debut film is uneven, but it's obvious that a raw energy and a torrent of imaginative ideas went into the making. Shot on weekends with a minuscule budget, casting friends and family, Fando and Lis plays like a cross of the later Fellini circus with the brutality of an early Buñuel film.

Structured as a road movie of sorts, our protagonists have bizarre encounters with an array of unpredictable characters. Many would call it violent, but there is a certain childlike quality in the staging: A burning piano is knocked over again and again in reverse motion; Mud bathers rise (a la Night of The Living Dead) at the base of a mountain; A knife perforates a little doll's crotch, and snakes are introduced in the crack. I could go on describing the stream of images that stuck with me, but you get the point: Watch the movie.

Trying to explain its meaning is beyond the point, as Jodorowsky himself stated: "I'm more attracted to what I don't understand." The symbolism ranges from light social satire to striking, brutal imagery. Same goes for the B&W cinematography, which alternates from bland hand-held "backyard style" to breathtakingly executed shots (see the wonderfully choreographed spiral movement when Fando abandons Lis in a pit, running up the hill in circles in the background while Lis laments in the foreground).

Yet Jodorowsky seems more invested at times in the power of his ideas than in their proper screen execution. The action is sometimes clunky and/or hampered by questionable editing choices. This inconsistency doesn't seem like a deliberate effect, since many sequences are conventionally but effectively cut. However, the use of music is quite expressive as well as many sound design choices.

Fando and Lis is not a perfect film, but "perfection" is an absurd term given the nature of the material. In any case, suffice to say that this feature debut resonates far more deeply than the sober, functional exercises that Hollywood chunks out every year, not to mention the "art-house mainstream" that permeates most of the Cannes Film Festival highlights of late.

Jodorowsky's work is often closer to performance art than it is to film, if we take film as an expression of consistent atmosphere and cinematic flow, illustrating ideas at the fully extent of the medium. The auteur expresses that as a filmmaker; he doesn't care whether the audience is bored or angry, he says a film should be made with your guts, without following any rules of cinematic grammar. The result is sometimes inconsistent but never disappointing.

In a world plagued by artistic concessions, Jodorowsky emerges as an artist with an unique voice, capable of delivering unforgettable images. His work is always refreshing and inspiring.

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.

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 film itself barely has any narrative and many of the film's mysteries will not be revealed until the viewer watches the commentary by the director (referring to the DVD version). Nevertheless, the film is an excellent example of the abstract art cinema. Everything in the film is a symbol, the film plays itself out in symbols and imagery, it is an example of a pure attempt to tell a story without holding the audiences hand in any way. This is international art cinema at it's best, and of course I understand that not everyone will enjoy this film, fortunately this genre does not require the audience to follow along. If you put your heart into watching the film and later watch the commentary to wash away the confusion, I promise, you'll be happy you did so.

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.