The First 5 minutes of Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain

The holy mountain                          Karl John Koo

Alejandro Jodorowksy's 'The Holy Mountain' was made in 1973 and is a Mexican surrealist fantasy film. The film is a dazzling satire on consumerism, militarism and exploitation.

The first five minutes of the film contain no dialogue. Information is conveyed to the viewer through signs, symbols, music and nonsense syllables delivered by the actors. This is a deliberate affect that the director has chosen. It is designed to bring you out of yourself. There is only the images and sounds before you, the rest is left to your own mind.

The music throughout is ritualistic and repetitive and bears resemblance to music of different indigenace tribes from around the world, although all of it was composed by the director, Jadorowsky.

When anylising the opening sequences of the first five minutes of the film, one thing that is noticeable is the sense of urgency relating to the cuts. The shots move quickly and it almost comes across as unprofessional-ism.  The craft of an inexperienced film maker. However, as the story moves on you start to realise that these 'jumpy' cuts are not a sign of poor editing. But in fact are the sign of a film maker who is throwing aside the codes and conventions of  traditional cinema in order to create something unique and his own. Everything that is done in this film is done for a reason. The 'renegade' editing technique is clearly symbolic. It represents a deliberate confusion of traditions. A theme that is notably apparent throughout the films story.

The opening scene depicts an Alchemist initiating two women through means of a spiritual ritual. The scene is drenched in white and to a lesser extent black. This is in clear correlation with the films spiritual themes. White is traditionally  used throughout various cultures to portray  purity and truth, which is what the two travelling women are seeking throughout the film.  Black and white is also used to represent spiritual themes such as wrong and right, bad and good and darkness and light. An example in relation to this would be the Chinese symbol 'Yin Yang'.   The alchemists black robes also represent spiritual themes. 'Black' is how he saw the two women when he met them. He saw them as uninitiated. Lost in the confusion of main stream society and detached from spiritual purity. It is worthy to note that after the two women are initiated by the alchemist he wears white while in their presence.

 The opening scene depicting two women being stripped naked by their master and shaved bald show clear indication of the 'losing your identity'  themes in the film. the 'jumpy' cuts and the extreme close ups of the two women's faces right from the beginning give you a sense that this is not a normal film. This is something well outside of the standards and norms of the Hollywood mill we have all grown so accustom to. It should also be mentioned that the film was a part of the 'Midnight movie' phenomenon of the early 1970's in america and was independently produced with endorsements from rock star John Lennon.

The film is not aimed at mainstream culture, it is for people on the edges of culture. Hippies, Activists, Beat nicks, Librel's and 'arty types'. From this opening scene alone it is very clear who the demographic is and what category of film this is. The demographic is young adults aged between 18 and 30 and the genre of the film is very much under the umbrella of 'Art house'. Due to the spiritual and anti- establishment themes in the film you could also argue that the movie was aimed at working class and lower middle class people on a socio economic level. While also no doubt entertaining champagne socialist and pretentious movie critics, the film's story goes much deeper than that and the director has made sure to pay attention to detail.

The Film moves on from the ritualistic cleansing scene to cuts of a series of different tarot cards all relating to the story that will soon unravel, While the opening credits are shown over them.

After the opening credits, when we are brought back into the story, we are introduced to the main antagonist. The Thief, who bares a very close resemblance to the western image of Jesus Christ. The Thief is a fairly average person. He struggles to get by, he is abused by the people around him, he drinks heavily and he craves an easy life filled with riches. When we first see him on the screen he is lying on the ground, wearing rags and The camera is zoomed in close to his face, which is covered in fly's. The fly's on his face are symbolic, they represent the thief state of living. He is excrement ( excrement being a re-a curing theme in the film) and fly's are drawn to excrement. In other words, He has not yet been initiated and spiritually cleansed. We are then shown a Tarot card lying next to him. The Tarot card is called 'The Fool' and depicts a young man stepping off a cliff. This is symbolic to the thief's character at this stage in the film. shortly after the director introduces us to the thief's only friend, a limbless Mexican native called Defeat. When we first see Defeat he has a Tarot card on his back. According to the Major Arcana Tarot Index, the card is also called Defeat and represents victory, confidence  and unwilling contributions from losing parties. This cards description gives clear indication to what role Defeat will play in the development of The Thief's story.

At the beginning of the film Defeat saves The Thief from a hoard of ravaging children who are throwing stones at him. Defeat and the thief then sit down and share a marijuana cigarette. The image of the thief being stoned by children is entirely symbolic to the characters relation to Christ. Throughout, we have so far been shown a variety of different forms of spiritual symbolism relating to Asian spiritual philosophy, Christian philosophy, Mysticism and the Medium practice of Tarot cards. We have also been shown two western women being 'cleansed' by a shamon and depictions of mexican poverty, such as restless youth attacking drunken men and homless people without limbs. Even the use of Marijuana was something that the director admits to believing has spiritual quality's.
 The First five minutes of this film set the viewer up for everthing that the film represents with minimul story and no dialogue. Alejandro jodorowky instead builds his mise en scene as a platform to show Ideas and art. Instead of telling a clear naritive he prefers to guide the viewer with symbols and sounds, alowing the viewer to think for themselves and make of it what they will.