What makes them so memorable is that no matter how bizarre Jodorowsky gets with his imagery, he is not just offering up empty cinematic calories. Right from the gorgeous prologue that finds the filmmaker meditating on the necessary evil of money (no doubt an allusion to his difficulties in finding financing for his projects over the years), "The Dance of Reality" is filled with enough visual astonishments to fuel a dozen ordinary films. This is not to say that Jodorowsky has grown safe and soft since his last film.
This is especially evident in the second half of the story, which is nonsense in the broad strokes (Jodorowsky has admitted that his father never really tried to kill Ibanez) but which is nevertheless a powerful and deeply felt attempt by an artist to come to terms with his complicated relationship with the father that he clearly hated and loved in equal measure. What is different this time around is that, for arguably the first time in his career, Jodorowsky has found the confidence to communicate his ideas to audiences in a direct and unapologetically emotional manner without falling back on his usual distancing techniques such as surreal imagery and extreme violence that made a film like "El Topo" so radical in its day (and which, to be frank, make it a little tiresome to endure nowadays).Īs wild as the proceedings get at certain points, they are grounded in a sense of reality this time around that lends the material a surprising amount of dramatic heft. In the second half, the focus shifts to Jaime and his dramatic conversion from communism to radicalism that leads him to abandon his family to set off on a quest to assassinate the hateful military leader, Carlos Ibanez (Bastian Bodenhofer), a mission that threatens to leave him both physically and spiritually crippled as a result.įor those with a working knowledge of Jodorowsky's past efforts, the basic elements of "The Dance of Reality"-ranging from troubled father-son relationships to a fascination with victims of various physical afflictions running the gamut from mutilation to dwarfism-will not seem unfamiliar. The first half focuses on young Alejandro ( Jeremias Herskovits) and his complicated relationship with his parents-father Jaime ( Brontis Jodorowsky, Alejandro's son) is a Stalin-obsessed brute consumed with making a man out of his seemingly effeminate son by any means necessary mother Sara ( Pamela Flores) is an overly doting type whose every word is literally delivered as an operatic aria. "The Dance of Reality" offers viewers a semi-autobiographical look at his youth in the remote Chilean town of Tocopilla in the early 1930s with the filmmaker himself serving as both the narrator and as an on-screen guide. The result will no doubt polarize viewers, as has been the case with his other major works, but it will certainly go down amongst those who see it as one of the most unforgettable films of this or any other year in recent memory.
Now there is "The Dance of Reality," a semi-autobiographical work that demonstrates that age has most certainly not mellowed him in the slightest in terms of audacity even while presenting the most personal and emotionally direct work of his career to date. Giger, music by Pink Floyd and a cast that would have been led by no less a figure than Salvador Dali. Earlier this year, there was " Jodorowsky's Dune," a fascinating documentary chronicling his wildly ambitious attempt to bring Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel to the screen with visual designs by the late H.R. In the ensuing years, there were rumors of projects that never came together for one reason or another but in recent months, Jodorowsky seems to be all over the place.
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