Alejandro Jodorowsky’s epic El Topo is a horrifically challenging movie. It’s important that you know that; we don’t want any of our guests to be surprised by what’s in store. It’s a violent, distorted take on Westerns: a man in black rides a horse through the desert, six-gun at his side. But there’s not really a plot driving the action, or developed characters. Symbol-rich, filled with riddles, visually arresting and composed like a series of interlocking dreams, El Topo isn’t a t...
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s epic El Topo is a horrifically challenging movie. It’s important that you know that; we don’t want any of our guests to be surprised by what’s in store. It’s a violent, distorted take on Westerns: a man in black rides a horse through the desert, six-gun at his side. But there’s not really a plot driving the action, or developed characters. Symbol-rich, filled with riddles, visually arresting and composed like a series of interlocking dreams, El Topo isn’t a typical movie so much as a kind of surrealist canvas brought to bleeding, squirming, sometimes detestable life.
That said, it’s the first major film in the career of one of cinema’s great visual minds. Jodorowsky went on to make The Holy Mountain, Santa Sangre and The Rainbow Thief; he did design work for the film version of Dune before that project went to David Lynch. And El Topo helped birth the midnight movie experience itself. Along with Pink Flamingos and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, it was one of the original cult films that die-hard movie buffs (and perhaps people in … altered states of consciousness) would shuffle to theatres at midnight to see. So come to REWIND and be tested by El Topo.
2h 5m / Not Rated / Western
(Doors & bar open by 10:00pm)
