La danza della realtà

Jodorowsky's works have been a part of my life since I first started venturing into the grown up section of my local public library (here in Denmark) in the early 1980s and discovered the "Incal" comics he was doing with Moebius at that time.

I gotta admit I'm not always convinced. "The Incal" is a wonderful comics classic, but some of his later (serialised) books seem to fizzle out to nothing after they've taken years to complete. They've given me quite a bit of frustration - and the reviewers in the comics press often seem equally frustrated.

I bought his return to movie making "Santa Sangre" when it was first released on VHS back around 1990. And I love this movie! It's in my opinion completely coherent and satisfying, and I've seen it many times.

The long awaited DVD box-set of his older 1970s work was a bit of a disappointment. Some good scenes in the movies, but also a lot of semi- amateurish wannabe-spiritual 1970s-style hippie-rambling. The best part of the box was the very enjoyable documentary "La constellation Jodorowsky", which you might be able to find on you-tube with a bit of luck.

But as for his new movie: It's good. VERY good. Possibly even better than "Santa Sangre". In some ways it seems like a remake of "El Topo", except without the western-trappings and based more closely on his own childhood. The main character (Jodorowsky's father) undergoes much the same transformation as El Topo, but the narrative is much more coherent and gripping. I was lucky enough to attend a screening with Jodo's son (who played El Topo's son, and plays Jodo's father in this movie), and while I was mesmerized by the movie even before listening to Brontis Jodorowsky - who is a funny, cool and sensible down-to-earth guy - the information he gave me made me appreciate it even more.

Basically the first part of the movie is a magical realist version of Jodo's childhood. But then the 'psycho magic' therapy that Jodo practices (in his second career as a kind of Tarot-card - or whatever - therapist) starts to play a part, and the movie becomes a kind of exorcism of the hard asshole'ish macho-part of his dictatorial father - the movie gives the father-character the journey of learning he never had in real life, making him a better wiser man that real-life Jodorowsky is able to make (symbolic) peace with. Anyway, this may sound like a lot of nonsense, but it made a lot of sense when Brontis Jodorowsky talked about it, and it makes for a compelling movie, even without the background information. It's as good as any Fellini-meets-Latin- American-Magical-Realism-movie could ever hope to be.

Basically I'm just happy that Jodo has now made two movies and one graphic novel ("The Incal") that I'm able to embrace and enjoy 100%.

Alejandro Jodorowsky - a living legend. That may be in part in his mind, but his status as a cult icon has been around for decades; when you make El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Santa Sangre, and have a whole side-line of comic books, "Magic Therapy" sessions (seriously, if you get the blu-ray he advertises it in the liner notes), and of course the legend of the insane achievement that was his adaptation-that-wasn't of Herbert's Dune, it's bound to happen.

He also always appears in interviews with an infectious, joyful personality even when he talks about very serious things like art and living and good life and being screwed over in the movie industry (see Jodorowsky's Dune for more on that). But here, he gets to return as a filmmaker, after an absence of decades, and the results? An overused word is appropriate here: fantastic.

The Dance of Reality is Jodorowsky's (for him) straight-forward look at what it was like for himself, and his father Jaime, to go through the late 1930's in Chile - but in the only way that Jodorowsky can as one of the last old-school surrealists (by this I mean he could pal around with Salvador Dali like it was nothing). The movie might appear to be two movies: the first half more-so considers how rough things were for poor little 'Alejandrito', especially under rather Jaime Jodorowsky's strict "Be a Man" philosophy of parenting (and, of course, Jodorowsky cast his son, Brontis, to play his father, and the director appears as "himself" in certain parts). The boy has long locks of golden hair, and these get cut off (rather, the wig comes off!) and the boy has to deal with being tickled - "Don't laugh!" - slapped, dentistry without anesthesia, and being picked on by fellow boys for being Jewish.

The movie might appear to be all about the kid from the first half... but then Jodorowsky does something really interesting - though it's bound to split audiences - as he really follows the father in the second half (with a couple of trips back to the son, and the mother Sara who sings every one of her lines of dialog). It's both the son AND the father's story in Dance of Reality, and it's touching how the director charts what is kind of a tale of humbling for this father character as he tries, as the staunch anti-dictator Stalin-supporting Communist he is, to kill the ruler of Chile Ibanez, and fails, and goes through many trials and tribulations.

Often, we see, with his hands curled in a permanent state of vegetation! Dance of Reality is filled with heart and passion, and what's great about it is how much the director doesn't cheat any of the emotions. Another filmmaker, maybe one more self-conscious or ironic, might play for a wink some of these scenes where the mother talk-sings in her operatic tones and the father beats the boy or the town-folk go about in their crazy ways (sometimes with masks, sometimes it's amputees up in arms, pun intended), or the clowns or lepers or other freaks who the director loves to see on screen.

Jodorowsky doesn't play like that; for him, this is all magical realism, surrealism, any-kind-of-WTF-ism you want, but it's not something that is taken precisely as a goof, if that makes sense. Yet it's that which makes many scenes delirious, and deliriously funny. The cure for leprosy, for example, is a howler of a scene, even (or because) as it doesn't make logical sense.

Sense? Hey, it's this filmmaker, why not go along for the ride? And it's actually more straightforward and stream-lined than the acid-trip fever dreams of his early/notorious midnight movie work. Here, it's more reflective - it's hard not to compare of course to it's cousin, Fellini's Amarcord, also in the 1930's, about fascism, and big breasts. But I'll continue returning to this film if only for its love of filmmaking, of bringing great big colors on the screen - I don't know how the color timing worked or how much was used, but every color here is vibrant and alive, as if the director were still remembering this like it was today, and it feels that way - and how much the family unit it explored without full-on cynicism. You can look at this father-mother-son and they have their problems and issues (putting it lightly), but... they're real and painful and experience pain and the horrors of society, and persevere.

This is a powerful work of brazen, uncompromising, funny-sad-strange-illuminating art for those open to the experience.

The film sets up a style of the director himself literally embracing his younger self and talking to the camera and his younger self in the midst of things going on. Add to this his comical intense cruel-to-be- kind, father and his mother who sings all her dialog and you have a unique narrative that is funny strange and compelling for the first third of the film. But then the story shifts to only the dad's story taking care of a horse and this section bogs down, as other sections tend to whenever the older and younger self aren't part of the action at all. And mom's singing gets a little tiresome as well though her singing voice is very good. Music in the film is uniformly fine. Then you get into some graphic nudity, urination and torture scenes, all of which seem to go on forever, and I fell out of love with it.

But it's almost redeemed by a final section where finally the older and younger director/character return for a farewell scene involving a dock and a boat. If this does turn out to be his last film it's one of the great film exits in history.

So it's too bad the script loses focus right in the middle and that the whole thing feels way too long. Might be a film that plays better if you don't watch it all in one sitting.

Visuals are typically vivid but now have a video quality that the HD "photography" that is distracting at first when comparing the richer film colors of his earlier work.

A worthy film that unfortunately can't sustain a strong first third.

Anyone interested in cult movies must have heard of Chilean artist Alejandro Jodorowsky – even if, during his 57 year association with the cinema so far, he has only delivered two shorts and seven feature films. With my open-air viewing of his latest effort, I have now watched all of them…having just caught up with the quirky LA CRAVATE (1957), the irritating TEATRO SIN FIN (1965), the exotic adventure TUSK (1980) and even the engrossing feature-length documentary JODOROWSKY'S DUNE (2013). As things stand now, I can divide Jodorowosky's filmography into three symmetrical groups: admirable (EL TOPO {1970}, SANTA SANGRE {1989} and, happily, THE DANCE OF REALITY), enjoyable (LA CRAVATE, TUSK, THE RAINBOW THIEF {1990}) and loathsome (TEATRO SIN FIN, FANDO AND LIS {1968}, THE HOLY MOUNTAIN {1973})…

It is not an unknown occurrence in movies that a respected artist takes an inordinately long hiatus from the medium: David Lean, Sergio Leone and Stanley Kubrick are perhaps the most egregious examples…but Jodorowsky's 23 years is probably the lengthiest sabbatical yet! Although he had been threatening to make a sequel to EL TOPO for the last decade – his screenplay of THE SONS OF EL TOPO was even glimpsed sitting on the man's shelves in the aforementioned "Dune" documentary! – it is perhaps unsurprising that it took the now-85-year-old Jodorowsky's most personal project, an adaptation of his own autobiography, to lure him back to the cinema (even if that only came about as a result of a reteaming with his DUNE producer Michel Seydoux). Equally plausible is the fact that, for a man with such a long and varied career, one film would not be enough to tell his whole life-story and, as his young son Adan said in the Q&A which followed the film's screening, Alejandro is currently working on the second installment! I, for one, am looking forward to it…

In keeping with the autobiographical nature of the film, his oldest son Brontis (who played the child in EL TOPO) has the lead role here of Jodorowsky's strict businessman father, Cristobal plays a Buddhist mystic who runs around practically naked, Adan plays a long-haired, bespectacled anarchist and Alejandro himself appears as the ruminating guardian angel of his put-upon younger self! Although I would be the first one to admit that I much prefer the Luis Buñuel brand of Surrealism rather than the self-indulgent obscurantist style propagated by the likes of Federico Fellini, Fernando Arrabal (Jodorowsky's own partner in his "Panic" movement days) and David Lynch (the director who ultimately brought DUNE to the big-screen, albeit disastrously, in 1984!), I have to say that sitting through the not unsubstantial 130-minute duration of THE DANCE OF REALITY made me realize that even Jodorowsky's most outre' ideas in his previous films might well have had their seeds in his troubled childhood in the desert Chilean village of Tocopilla.

The film can be roughly divided into three segments: the first part concentrates on the boy's physical and mental abuse at the hands of his Ukranian-Jewish father (including vignettes involving red shoes and the fire brigade); the second on the father's ineffectual political activities (including an amusing failed assassination attempt at a best-dressed dog contest and a lengthy episode as the Chilean dictator's horse groomer); and, finally, the prodigal father's return homeward (after suffering from a bout of amnesia following much torture at the hands of the tyrannical regime). The father (incidentally, Brontis' appearance here turns him into a virtual dead ringer for Hollywood actor Peter Sarsgaard!) had been a circus performer and is portrayed as a staunch atheistic Communist, the mother only communicates in operatic arias and the young boy is seen sporting a blonde wig at the latter's insistence (in emulation of her own father's mane) and the former's chagrin. While berating his son for looking effeminate and mingling with the local mystics and mutilated soldiers-turned-paupers, Jodorowsky Sr. is shown consorting with whores, transvestites and political subversives in his weekly night-time trysts to the local tavern.

As can be gleaned from a cursory glance at the storyline and as was to be expected from this director, despite the reflective and occasionally even pastoral mood that permeates the proceedings, the film cannot fail but include a surfeit of full-frontal nudity which result in a couple of strong scenes: both father and mother get to shed their clothes but, instead of using it during scenes of sexual activity, the elder Jodorowsky shows his father being humiliated and tortured, himself as a young boy being comforted by his stark-naked, big-breasted mum and the latter miraculously healing her leprosy–stricken husband by urinating on him!! In such a godless environment (where religious relics are dumped into the toilet bowl), even horses can become objects of desire as the Chilean leader is depicted metaphorically having a virtual orgasm while astride his white-maned Bucephalus and, consequently, it is the latter who gets poisoned instead of its owner who is in turn devastated by the loss! The director's typically skewed sense of humour, then, is evident in the recurring presence of a midget barker, forever donning outlandish costumes, in an attempt to draw crowds to Jodorowsky's lingerie shop - but which are mostly unappreciated by his irascible employer!

While the occasional longueur does make itself felt (particularly during the second half), the film moves at a surprisingly breezy pace thanks to a compelling narrative and one is certainly thankful for it – especially considering the feature film started screening at around 10:00 p.m.! Jodorowsky's visual artistry is as sharp as ever and one barely realizes that the movie was shot on digital. Adan Jodorowsky's score is definitely an asset and, when asked about what inspired him to write it during the following Q&A session, he mentioned not just his father's self-penned music for EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN but also the works of legendary film composer Bernard Herrmann!

As a fan of Jodorowsky's earlier films, I was very interested in how the new one would compare. La Danza de la Realidad follows Alejandro Jodorowsky's childhood in Tocopilla, Chile. His tyrannical father is played by his son Brontis, previously seen as El Topo's son. The film begins focusing on Jodorowsky as a kid, then shifts more toward his father. Alejandro Jodorowsky also appears on screen, as himself. A scene I particularly enjoyed was the meeting of the local communists. The digital photography is also very well done. I won't give anything away; you should see it for yourself. This film is one of his best. If you like Jodorowsky, go see it.