El Topo

Made by Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky in Mexico, El Topo gained immediate notoriety in the US, where it was one of the first ‘midnight movies’, and its problematic content continues to provoke controversy today.

In Jodorowsky’s notorious acid Western, the desert is a land where a boy becomes a man by burying his childhood in the sand at the age of seven; where all sexuality is predatory and all affection is both the only salvation and an unforgivable weakness; where God’s will is revealed at the point of a gun and the only thing worse than the vast, lawless desert is the barbarism of civilization.

El Topo follows its hero through the shifting sands of a quest which suggests an allegory of religious conflict, a representation of the connection between psychedelic culture and spiritual exploration. Throughout the titular protagonist’s journey, voices come from the wrong mouths and flashes of events hint at motivations which none of the characters are quite realised enough to truly embody. Yet while the dense symbology of the film never fully settles, the story runs on an inexorable internal logic all its own as it moves toward a third act that reveals an unexpected sweetness just before its explosive conclusion.

– Harvard Film Archive