by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Alejandro Jodorowsky
CAST: Axel Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Thelma Tixou, Sabrina Dennison, Adan Jodorowsky
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 86% Certified Fresh
PLOT: In Mexico, the traumatized son of a carnival knife-thrower and trapeze artist bonds grotesquely with his now-armless mother.
In years past, whenever I read articles or reviews that evoked the name of Alejandro Jodorowsky, it always seemed to be with the reverence and awe befitting a living saint, or at least a holy fool. He was mentioned alongside words like “fever dream” and “visionary” and “madman.” His name pops up a little more frequently these days due to the huge popularity of the new Dune films; he was slated to direct his own version of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi masterpiece, but it stalled in the planning stages around 1976, after $2 million had already been spent in pre-production. (Storyboards of his intended visions for Dune boggle the mind…Google them some time if you’re unfamiliar. One of the sticking points was that he wanted the movie to be between 10 to 14 hours long.)
I mention all this because it has taken me this long to finally get around to seeing one of Jodorowsky’s films, Santa Sangre, and I can honestly say that all the hyperbole surrounding his name is justified. It’s not a perfect film, because how could it be? It’s a film that tells a straightforward story, but the emotions driving the storyteller are on full display, not necessarily his technique. Or maybe his technique is flawless because the film conveys such raw emotional power. I don’t know. I may be unqualified to break this movie down into its component parts to critique it effectively. All I can say is, if you ever find yourself starved for new images in cinema, Santa Sangre will satisfy you for months, if not years.
A prologue shows us a naked man in a Mexico asylum who apparently believes he is an eagle. As orderlies dress him, we flash back to the man as a young boy, Fenix, who performs as a magician in a third-rate travelling circus. His fat father, Orgo, is the ringmaster and a knife-thrower. His mother, Concha, is a trapeze artist, but she is also the leader of a bizarre sect of Catholicism that worships the figure of a girl who lost both her arms to vicious rapists. We also meet a young deaf-mute girl, Alma, and her ostensible mother, The Tattooed Woman (she is never called anything else), who seduces Orgo by letting him throw knives at her. From the documentary on the very loaded Blu-Ray, I learn that the actress playing The Tattooed Woman volunteered to be the “target” while a professional knife-thrower threw real knives at her…including one that lands in an outrageously small space between her thighs. Crazy.
Later, when Concha discovers them in bed together, she throws acid on Orgo’s genitals. Enraged, Orgo takes two of his throwing knives and literally disarms Concha. He later staggers out of his tent and meets an ignominious end by his own hand. Concha’s son, Fenix, has witnessed most of this while locked inside one of the circus trailers, which PROBABLY influenced his current state of insanity.
In between these two events, we have seen Fenix despair over one of the circus elephants that is clearly dying, blood trickling out of its trunk as his caretaker looks on sorrowfully. What follows is a scene depicting a funeral procession for the elephant, but the procession is nothing compared to how the elephant and its massive coffin are disposed of. This and many other circus scenes feel like Fellini by way of David Lynch.
Back in the present…after an outing with other patients at the asylum (played by real Down syndrome patients) goes bad (they are hijacked by a pimp who offers them cocaine), Fenix escapes and reunites with his now-armless mother. She co-opts him to be her arms in a vaudeville act and at home, where he sits or stands behind her everywhere and manipulates his arms so effectively the illusion of his arms being her arms is complete.
…but I’m just giving you lists. There is much more to discover in Santa Sangre that I do not want to spoil. It is a singular experience, lending itself to many and varied interpretations and certainly not appealing to everyone. Jodorowsky is okay with that. He says in an interview that he does not make films to make a living. He only makes a movie when he has something to say.
So…what is he saying in Santa Sangre? There are elements of domineering motherhood with Concha virtually subsuming the grown Fenix and his arms. Later developments show us that she has become the most fearsome mother figure since Mrs. Bates. Is Jodorowsky exorcising some psychic demons from his childhood? You tell me.
The strange cult led by Concha features in its temple a large pool of blood, supposedly the blood of the disfigured saint that never evaporated. There is a lot of blood in Santa Sangre…naturally. There’s the dying elephant, the death of Orgo, a splatter house murder that looks inspired by Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, a hallucination where Fenix imagines he is bleeding out like the circus elephant, and more. Blood is a central element in the Catholic and Christian faiths. Is Jodorowsky making a grand statement about the inherently gruesome nature of organized religion, where something that is worshipped on one hand is off-putting and hideous on the other? You tell me.
Jodorowsky cast three of his own sons in the film (one of them, in a small role as the aforementioned pimp, died shortly after the film was completed). There are no honorable father figures in the film. Was the movie intended as some kind of cinematic apologia for his failures as a father?
One scene features a man who spies the older version of Alma, the deaf-mute girl from the circus, on a street at night, and holds her with his gaze. Then he reaches up to his right ear and slowly performs an act that was only hinted at in Reservoir Dogs. What is Jodorowsky trying to say with this scene? Jodorowsky helpfully answers this question in an interview: he doesn’t know. He just heard about this guy who literally pulled a “Van Gogh” and was able to do this weird little trick, so he drafted him into the movie on the spot. The scene is only there because Jodorowsky thought it looked cool. Chew on that.
Based on that “explanation”, how much of the rest of the movie may we infer is there just for the sake of being there? If everything is a symbol for something else, couldn’t we also argue that nothing is a symbol? For the sake of argument, let’s say that the whole movie doesn’t really symbolize anything aside from Jodorowsky’s overpowering need to put these visions on the screen. Why can’t it just be, as I mentioned before, a fever dream, a movie composed entirely of images that are not concerned with placating any Hollywood demographic or studio focus groups? I am reminded of a line from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
That’s not to say Santa Sangre is plotless, not by a long shot. There is a definite story arc with clearly established characters, surrounded by phantasmagorical imagery. If Jodorowsky’s motives or morals are not clearly defined, I’m okay with that. I just know that I’ll be mentally chewing over some of that imagery for a very long time.
[Note: I must point out that the making-of documentary on the Blu-Ray is one of the most informative and entertaining behind-the-scenes docs I’ve ever seen. From it, I learn that the film was inspired by, among other things, a rehabilitated real-life serial killer that struck up a conversation with Jodorowsky at a bar one day. That The Tattooed Lady was unable to shower properly for seven weeks due to the fragile nature of her fake tattoos. That the deaf-mute Alma was played by a real deaf-mute girl. That for the older Fenix to walk perfectly in step with Concha to be her arms as she walked around, the actress playing Concha would reach behind her and grab him by his testicles. It’s one of the few making-of docs that I would consider required viewing after watching the movie itself.]
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 