Santa sangre

There's so much you can say about this work. Vivid characters, colours, and situations that practically leap off the screen into the theatre next to you. A wonderfully quirky, repeatedly startling story. Graceful low-key cinematography that turns slums and sideshows into an eerily beautiful netherworld, countless images that look like you could freeze them and hang them as inspirational totems for cults we have to hope don't exist. Jodorowsky paints with a heavy, vibrant brush, but it's the perfect tone for this primal-yet-humanizing tale.

But I should post a warning. As far as I'm concerned, my first viewing of this film was one of the more worthwhile two hours or so I've ever spent in a theatre, and I think based on my experience that this sadly neglected wonder deserves every bit of word-of-mouth promotion it can get. But I'm betting it's not to everyone's taste.

So this is my advice: if you found Storaro's green and red/jungle foliage and human remains canvasses in Apocalypse Now unsettlingly beautiful the first time you saw them, and wondered momentarily whether still prints were available for hanging before realizing what you were actually suggesting to yourself, here's a film for you. If you found Delicatessan's celebration of the paradoxical beauty hiding in human ugliness and stupidity a bit too sanitized for your taste, Santa Sangre's rather murkier depths await. You will love this work.

If, on the other hand, you have no taste for painters who work best in human blood as opposed to oils, and/or don't appreciate a bloody carnality mixed in with your religious metaphor, you will quite probably hate it with a passion that exceeds my affection. And I don't really blame you or judge you for walking out early. It takes all kinds.

Either way, fondly or with revulsion, you will remember it vividly, ten years later. I can say this confidently, as that's how long it was from the first time I saw this film to the day I wrote this review. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Santa Sangre (1988) is an absolute curio; a surrealist satire on the absurdities of organised religion, a violent pastiche of slasher cinema and an infernal parody of Hitchcock's classic Psycho (1960) all rolled into one. These particular ideas are further tied together by director Alejandro Jodorowsky's continuing preoccupations with circus themes, childhood, murder and performance art; as vivid colours and bold strokes of character and ideology are thrown wildly around the screen amidst surreal visions, childhood reflections and elements of satire. It perhaps lacks the obvious depth and esoteric mysticism of his earlier films - that trio of surrealist masterworks Fando and Lis (1968), El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973) - but it remains, nonetheless, a visually impressive and psychologically deep experience that manages to be moving and emotionally demanding, despite the often grotesque and uncomfortable presentation of theme and imagery.

Given the superficial aspects of the narrative, many people have chosen to see the film as a work of horror; something that is entirely plausible given the definite themes of psychological breakdown, madness and inner-torment; not to mention a number of violent murders that propel the story back and forth between enigmatic moments of nightmarish abandon and more colourful and darkly comic moments of parody, farce and cinematic self-reference. However, it is wrong to box the film in with such limited interpretations or categorisations of genre, given the very obvious fact that the film has a number of more interesting layers at work beneath these more blatant surface elements. If anything, I would call the film a psychological fantasy and leave the individual viewer to project their own ideas and interpretations onto it, without having their opinions swayed or pre-led by the hyperbolic platitudes of reviews like this.

However, even with that in mind, Santa Sangre is one of those films that simply demands such discussion, and perhaps requires reviews like this one, not for the benefit of other people, but as an attempt by me to piece together all aspects of the film's bizarre, patch-work like approach to storytelling, and the deeper themes and references that Jodorowksy toys with amidst the continual barrage of visual and aural stimulation. The presentation of the film involves a number of different aspects, some referential, others purely fantasy, moving from an almost Felliniesque portrait of carnival life and idyllic youth - as we are introduced to our central character as a young boy - before shifting further into the young man's life and becoming something of a darkly comic send-up along the lines of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) or Bad Boy Bubby (1993). From here the film becomes darker still, with Jodorowsky establishing the murderous sub-plot, which reaches something of a peak with one of the most insanely violent murder scenes ever witnessed in contemporary cinema.

Nevertheless, anyone expecting a straight murder film - something more akin to the work of producer Claudio Argento's brother Dario - will probably be disappointed. Jodorowsky's intentions for the film go beyond such notions, as he instead ties together a number of disparate concerns to create a grotesque, yet strangely beautiful film that manages to reference the Hollywood melodrama of Sunset Blvd. (1950) and the Gothic horror of the films of James Whale within a story of murder, innocence and Freudian psychology. The impact of the film is certainly within its bizarre symbolism and surreal beauty; the elephant's death-scene for example is one of the most extraordinarily moving things I've ever seen, and ties in nicely with the feelings of the character towards the end of the film, in which the ghosts of the past return amidst a series of startling and frightening recollections, fairy-tale like abstraction and moments of absurd humour.

The film creates an astounding atmosphere from the very start, particularly in the early scenes set within the circus, churches and sweaty streets of Mexico City; with Jodorowsky demonstrating a real understanding and feel for the place, with its sad incongruities of dwarfs and giants and that air of suffocating and claustrophobic dread. The direction, production design, music and photography really capture the dangerous and somewhat confusing tone of the environment, whilst simultaneously retaining a sense of childlike wonderment; particularly in one of the film's most astounding sequences, in which the corpse of an African-elephant is carried through the streets in a giant coffin, dumped into a ravine by a concoction of carnival mourners, only to be savaged and ripped to pieces moments later by a pack of hungry peasants. This scene acts as a grand metaphor for the supporting characters here, and how they send our anti-hero-like protagonist into a spiral of madness, murder and forgiveness.

This is a startling work, a truly artistic masterpiece, which did achieve some mainstream recognition for Jodorowoski but not what the film deserved. Filled with unsettling images, grotesque displays of violence and sexuality, and subtle but comic references, Santa Sangre is Jodorowoski's most coherent work. It is also a thoroughly artistic work, with a greater emphasis on representation than drama or morality. If you have not seen this movie, rent it. You will not soon forget it whatever your final evaluation might be. Too bad its not available on DVD (hint).

I saw the U.S. premiere of this movie at the DC FilmFest. I was intrigued by the thought of a man who makes movies once every 15 years.

Well, I'll tell you. The people sitting next to me left 10 - 15 minutes into the movie. If you can get through the first 30 minutes, it is worthwhile.

Of course, I am into very surrealistic movies and ones that address the question of what is real and what is not.

After seeing it, the visuals have stayed with me over the years. A powerful movie for the adventurous.

A very fascinating but disturbing film. Luckily I had the chance to see it in the late-night screening in a small cinema in my city.

The blood in the title reappears in different contexts as theme in the film, from colored water claimed as saint´s blood, over that drained in a tattooing resembling an initiation rite, to that of murdered women. I would not recommend it for people sensitive to such sights. For others it shows that `blood is a very special liquid' in all its metaphysical contexts.

There is some very powerful imagery in this film: a bleeding, dying elephant and its bizarre burial, cut-off arms, white-painted corpses, etc., images that haunt you not because of their goriness but their unique intensity.

The story is based on that of a Mexican mass murderer so I was a bit biased before I went to the cinema, but was surprised when the story unrolled it was not about some ugly, monstrous guy like I expected, but that the protagonist was portrayed as a troubled young man for whom one could have sympathies despite his killings. I won´t summarize the plot once again, just read the summary on this site for that. What made the film especially interesting is that Jodorowsky packs his film full of different motifs: Christian saint´s cult, Freud´s Oedipus complex, the ancient story of Phoenix. As even names are filled with significance in this film it is no coincidence the main character is called Fenix and has an eagle tattooed on his breast. Resembling the ancient myth, Phoenix has to be destroyed first, in this case through freeing his own self from his omnipresent mother figure that holds a grasp on his soul, before he can be reborn again.