Santa Sangre - 1989

I had always heard of El Topo as being a weird ass visionary cult film, but I was introduced to Alexandro Jodorowsky through The Holy Mountain .  I really loved it, but I've only seen it twice, and I worry about what a rewatch would do.  I liked El Topo less, and I haven't seen anything else by him.

I once started Santa Sangre on a free streaming service, and memory serves I didn't even get 10 minutes in.  I thought "oh...it's more of the same," and I turned it off.  And it is, I'm not calling him a one trick pony, I'm just saying you really have to be in the mood for this, and it's no fault of anyone's if they are not.

The mood is as follows:  Patient, introspective, open-minded, and curious.  You have to have a lot of time on your hands, no phone, and you have to be willing to do some of the work for Jodorowsky.  Not that he in any way falls short of anything really, but just that there's so much here, in what I would describe as his least dense film I've seen, there is still so much to unpack and sift through.

In the beginning of the film, we meet Fenix, a mentally unstable man who is naked perched in a tree.  Fenix's story gets unfolded in flashbacks of him as a child as well as however long ago, the actions that led him to the institute.  He has a mother who was part of a religious movement which was decimated by the government.  They were worshipping a woman with no arms, and soon enough Fenix's mother's arms are cut off.  He is possessed by her to act as her arms, performing weird arts and doing everything for her that her arms would.  She starts demanding that he kill people soon enough.

Visionary is always a understatement place to begin with Jodorowski's work.  This is still the least cluttered and the least insane of his work I've seen, but man is it out there.  The movie is packed with weird ass stuff, whether it's usual cast of deformed or different looking people, bizarre sexuality, or religious imagery.  Santa Sangre was not written by him, so that may be why it's not as nutty of a fruitcake, but the writers knew what they wanted when they sought him out to direct.

Santa Sangre is hailed by Empire magazine and other critics as a great film, it's artistic and unique, it's obvious of the tremendous talent behind it.  But...  do I like it?  I don't know.  There's a lot of elements I like.  I don't even mind the length or the slow pacing.  I feel like it's just somehow not quite my thing.  I give it a solid 3.5 though.