Такой вихрь образов вряд ли можно встретить в еще какой-либо ленте. Из ран убитых солдатами жертв вылетают птицы, жабы в старинной испанской форме под нацистские марши штурмуют пирамиды ацтеков. Главный герой просыпается голым в земном мире пороков и соблазнов. Пройдя сквозь череду соблазнов и ужасов обыденной жизни, он встречает Учителя, который проводит его через миры каббалы, Таро, Астрологии. Персонаж, пройдя обряды инициации и очищения, получает возможность вместе с другими учениками совершить попытку подняться на Священную Гору, чтобы постичь тайны девяти мудрецов, проживших 30 000 лет...

People have many reasons to watch movies. For many, the reasons can be fairly basic: to laugh, to cry, to be scared, to get turned on, and to make their pulses quicken, all within a safe and socially-acceptable environment. Some viewers want to be spurred to thought, others to action. But for those who truly care about cinema, there are few moviegoing pleasures more profound than to discover images that are unique and unforgettable. Such images are the stock in trade of director Alejandro Jodorowsky.

The early seventies were a time of spiritual exploration, when many people attempted to broaden their minds through drugs, sexual experimentation, Eastern mysticism, and art. In this respect, Jodorowsky was a quintessential filmmaker of the period, not only because he dealt with all of these things, but also because he was a seeker himself. A true renaissance man, Jodorowsky has worked as a director, a composer, a philosopher, a novelist, a religious scholar, a mime, a comic book writer, and a psychotherapist. Like fellow director and seeker Werner Herzog, Jodorwsky is forever in search of new worlds to explore. But unlike Herzog, whose films have taken him all over the world, Jodorowsky's worlds reside primarily within the mind.

The most vivid cinematic distillation of Jodorowsky's gifts obsessions is his 1973 film The Holy Mountain. The film tells the story of an alchemist (played by Jodorowsky himself) who leads nine disciples on a spiritual journey to the legendary Holy Mountain of Lotus Island in a quest for immortality. But even if you're not down with Jodorowsky's spirituality, it's still easy to appreciate the film from a purely visual standpoint, as The Holy Mountain contains some of the most wonderful and horrifying sights I've ever seen in a movie. A shot of Christ-like figure wailing in agony as he's surrounded by a warehouse full of hundreds of papier-m.

The Holy Mountain is like a reverse of Dante’s Inferno; where we see an ascent into heaven from the perspective of corruption and like Inferno, the ending ultimately reveals the nature of the cycle. In The Holy Mountain evil charges into heaven to steal its secrets, only to discover that the sacrifices it has to make to obtain those secrets purifies it. Corruption and gluttony and lust and brutality, devour themselves like serpents eating their own tail; showing that evil’s greatest wish can only ever be obtained by destroying itself. The caricatures of the thieves of the Holy Mountain, are not made to parody, but to show the nature of evil in the face of its own ultimate end; the futility of greed and ambition where as much as men and women of power can control, dominate and hurt others, ultimately they are an even greater slave to themselves

The Holy Mountain’s message of ultimate self-destruction carries to the very core of every single scene in this movie; and not just in the events, or the story but in the direction and acting and effects. It flies in the face of its very medium, it shatters perception and realism, it shows the thin absurd veneer beneath the magic of camera tricks and special effects. It is as though the film itself cannot escape the scrutiny of the quest for the Holy Mountain. We see the exposed devices made to create the illusion of blood squibs; it leaves the very nature of the effect naked on camera, and yet the effect is somehow even stronger. The desire to reveal, instead of disguise the trick leaves one feeling a sense of uncomfortable honesty without pretension. That is one of the reasons why The Holy Mountain works so well. The strangest, most effective and most beautiful images in this movie are one hundred percent authentic.

Jodorowsky’s vision culminates and implodes in the finale; as everything is stripped away from the characters and the film itself. All of the fear, doubts and insecurity, all of the gimmicks of cinema are abandoned; the movie is left empty, naked, exposed and free.

The Holy Mountain is a film that really goes beyond taste and critical debate; it is very possible to vehemently hate The Holy Mountain and still appreciate the sheer spectacle and audacity of Jodorowsky’s achievement. The Holy Mountain doesn’t strive to entertain or to pacify, it does not seek to use political or social imagery to be rebellious; love it or hate it, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain is a search for personal truth.

The Holy Mountain is an oddity; a unique vision in a field too often devoid of insight. For the connoisseurs of the bizarre, the strange and the unorthodox, for those who seek more from a film than simplicity in plot and visuals and yearn for something more; Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain is waiting. / Review by Jeffery J. Timbrell /