The Holy Mountain
Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky
- drama
The story
The Alchemist assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. The occult adept's intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.
What it’s like
Saturated, hallucinatory colour and an unbroken parade of images that feel closer to a fever dream than a narrative: a Mexican city of garish, sun-bleached squalor giving way to gold-leafed temples, rivers of mud, and blinding white desert, all shot with a restless, wide-angle camera that lingers on grotesque tableaux and sudden tableaux of tableau-like stillness. The score is a clatter of percussion, pipe organ, and mystical chants, broken by long stretches of eerie quiet. Its vibe is feverish satire with a sacred edge, a kaleidoscope of blasphemy, wonder, and bodily excess. Violence is frequent and often shocking, including a graphic crucifixion, bloody gunfire, animal cruelty, nudity, and sexual imagery, delivered with a mix of slapstick and horror rather than realism. Its people shed their identities one humiliation at a time, a hollow materialist slowly stripped toward something like enlightenment. It suits late nights alone with a strong stomach, and viewers who want surreal provocation, religious iconoclasm, and visual extravagance more than comfort or coherence.
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