Le paradis du Mexicain

I saw this movie after midnight on a movie-channel, in a dark room. I really wasn't expecting much but somehow this strange and surreal film has a mood to it that very few movies have. Don't try to make sense of it ( I don't know if there is any ) Just relax, and take it in, and you'll see what I mean.

Nothing in this movie is spelled out. It is a mystery. It's very funny, and it just leaves you with a feeling of having seen something very important and meaningful about life and death, but you're not sure what...

My favourite spot in the movie is when "our" man is asked to give something to the followers, upon which he starts to hum a continuous tone. The "disiples" soon catches on and sings the tone to. He then leaves them, and they dare not stop this gift they have been given. Throughout the rest of the movie you can always hear them in the background or nearby, off camera, as the movie goes on with other things!

And the closing scene with the setting sun, and the music/sound just had me mesmerized!

I saw it only once, in 1986, and even today I often think about it. I wish I could buy it, but I haven't seen it anywhere. I really want to see it one more time.

A MUST see !

Yeah, what those comments above this one say. It's really weird. Even if your not out to see the symbolism which is included in everything this movie does, you won't be able to turn away. At times it resembles a car crash; something in you says maybe you should look away, or just go about your business, but are somehow unable. A must see.

Quite simply one of the odder incarnations of a Jesus story: in a desolate town in the middle of a borax desert in the late 19th century, where Herod has a serious case of constipation, the holy ghost is a cigar smoking actor under a white sheet with eye-holes and a mouth cutout, and Jesse aka Jesus wants to be a song and dance man. But the people won't let him be. Alan Arbus is dry and laid back in the role, always puzzled and not at all a mystery. Downey hit the high point of his career with this one, possibly the last movie he made without someone looking over his shoulder. I wish he'd the opportunity to continue exploring filmmaking of this type.

I'm sure there's no such thing as a perfect robert downey movie, but some are better than others; some Downey movies are even better than other movies, generally speaking - and for its best sequences & acting, this obscure, lysergic cinematic parable, rates as one of the most memorable & thought-provoking films I've ever discovered. Downey is super-Altman; the Christian satire is simultaneously Neitzschean & Brautiganesque - Allan Arbus is excellent.

Downsides to the movie are several, & typical of this filmmaker - easily a third of the movie is incoherent boring & gratuitous - Downey's self-referential homages to family & friends are typical of independent filmmakers; Downey has literally taken this type of nepotism to the level of art, but it never succeeds, in any of his movies. Yet none of his other films achieve the kind of profundity this one at least occasionally does. & in spite of its excesses & shortcomings, the film brims with political & poetic energy & ideas. Quite probably this is the work of a director who thinks the raggedness & incoherence & navel-gazing are all enhancements, or at least necessary to The Experience (etc., etc.). Bow-tied think-tankers might remain unmoved by the delicate insights of Downey. But I'd have to go so far as to say Greaser's Palace stands as a far more compelling & visceral evocation of the drug dazed visionary daydreaming that preoccupied so many well-endowed minds in the sixties & very early seventies than do, e.g., Nicholson's 'Head' or Hopper's 'Last Picture Show'. Downey, Arbus & Co. at least have much more brain to fry.

Greaser's Palace is a comical, chaotic, absurdist and surreal religious parody. It's like El Topo meets The Life of Brian. Alan Arrbus plays a strange messiah-like zoot-suited actor/singer/dancer called Jessy, who one day parachutes into a field close to a Western town where a host of odd characters hang out, the main one being a constipated chap called Seaweedhead Greaser, who runs the titular saloon. Jessy has some miraculous traits - he can walk on water and heals some of the locals by telling them: "If you feel, you heal". One of the most memorable scenes (and my favourite) is when Jessy approaches a group of people praying and says to them: "I bring you a message. Exactly six miles north of Skagg Mountain in the Valley of Pain, there lives an evil devil-monster. His name is Bingo Gas Station Motel Cheeseburger With A Side Of Aircraft Noise And You'll Be Gary Indiana. And he loves to hurt people. The last time I saw Bingo Gas Station Motel Cheeseburger With A Side Of Aircraft Noise And You'll Be Gary Indiana, he told me what he wants to do. He wants to come down here and kill each and every one of you. But I said to him: 'Bingo, wait a minute!'. And the reason I said that is because I believe in you people. I believe you can do the job. I believe you can help each other. I believe you can make this world a better place to live in. That's it". 

If you haven't seen this film then it must go on your must-see list of films, category surrealism. Chaotic cineastes will approve.