Despite having seen his name mentioned in connection to "off-beat" cinema for years,I have somehow never got round to seeing a title by writer/directing auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky.With a poll being held on IMDb's Classic Film board for the best titles of 2014,I felt that it was the perfect time to witness Jodorowsky's first film in 23 years.The plot:Fearing that his sons girl-like long hair is stopping him from "manning up", Jaime takes his young son Alejandro to the barbers.Ignoring the pleas from his wife Sara,Jaime attempts to harden the boy up by teaching him about how a man should behaviour,from kicking beggars to the curb,to taking raw slaps across the face,and having a filling done with no anaesthetic.Worshipping Stalin (to the point where he has a Pop star-style poster on his wall!) Jaime becomes part of an underground group of communists which includes clowns,lesbians and fellow Jewish residence who are noticing an increasing amount of anti-Semitism in the village.Feeling that military president Carlos Ibáñez del Campo's grip on power is gaining strength,the group decide that they must assassinate Campo,so that communist rule can finally take over.Taking on the task of killing Campo,Jaime waves goodbye to his family & the small village,as he travels to the big city for his target.As Jaime sets his sights on Campo,he finds himself taking part in a dance on the very edge of reality.View on the film:Towering above the movie as an on-screen narrator,writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky brings his autobiography to life by offering a blend of enchanting surrealism and stark,harsh Drama.Backed by a wonderfully strange circus score from Alejandro's son Adan) Jodorowsky elegantly uses Fantasy to build an atmosphere where the viewer is never completely sure over what is real and what is imagination.Filmed on location in his childhood village,Jodorowsky and cinematographer Jean-Marie Dreujou use decaying blues & reds to show the light that Alejandro is desperate to find in the darkness.Along with the eye-catching costumes designed by Alejandro's wife Pascale Montandon-Jodorowsky, (when ol' Alejandro makes a flick,it's a family day out!)Jodorowsky stops the audience from ever being able to settle down,thanks to packing the title with explosively bonkers touches which go from Alejandro's mum only being able to speak in operetta,to Alejandro's mum curing her husband's illness by peeing on him.Keeping the title at a child's eye view Jodorowsky keeps away from sentimentalising any area of this allegorical childhood,with every slap from Jaime and anti-Semitic remark from the village cutting a piece out of Alejandro's heart.Whilst Jodorowsky shows Jaime to never feel love towards anyone other than Stalin,Jodorowsky uses the final 30 minutes to offer a sliver of epiphany,as Jaime finds his dreams being left to fade in the fields with the wild horses.Although the final 30 minutes of Jodorowsky's 130 minute canvas do offer the chance to focus on Jaime's inner feelings,Jodorowsky's final flight-of-Fantasy's sadly lose a bit of there bounce,due to the electrifying Jaime/Alejandro relationship not being there as a launch pad.Making this a full-on family affair, Brontis Jodorowsky slides the movie into a warped psychoanalysis world that would make Freud's head explode,as Brontis gives a superb performance as his dads dad.Given the hardest of rides possible by his dad, (with a scene involving his testicles V an electric cable being a real moment for the family album!) Brontis matches Jaime's blunt,brutal treatment towards his son,with an oddly quiet assertive manner,with Brontis showing loneliness in Jaime's eyes,as his assassination dreams turn to a fading memory.Not even being 10 years old when making the title, Jeremias Herskovits gives an extraordinary performance as Alejandro,with Herskoits keeping the character away from being sickly sweet,by showing Alejandro's tears of terror from the pain caused by his dad,with tears of joy from the Fantasy's that he is making,as Alejandro takes his feet off the dance floor of reality.

One accusation that I've heard leveled against Jodorowsky is that he is too much a madman: that there is nothing to understand about his films, as they are the work of a deranged mind. Deranged? That hardly seems likely. He seems to way far too functional to earn that label. An author as well as a filmmaker, he is clearly a person of some thoughtfulness. What makes him different, however, is that he is a magical thinker. I mean he is a magical thinker in two senses: first, that he is prone to applying causal relationships where, to quote wikipedia, "scientific consensus says that there are none." Secondly, he is a magical thinker in that his imagination is vivid, almost magical in the connections that makes between various elements of this strange life on Earth.His personal beliefs, so central to the message of this film, flow from spiritual traditions, from philosophies that depend upon magical thinking for their support. He holds an idea of psychogenealogy, for example, which draws upon Jung's collective unconscious. One can take Jung's ideas more or less literally, but there exists enough ambiguity in the style of Jung's writing that a popular interpretation of the collective unconsciousness is that of a sort of world mind, a sort of wellspring which exists outside of our reality and perhaps unbounded by time. In this way, the experience of the father, and the father's father, are the experience of the son. The father-son relationship is, of course, key to The Dance of Reality. Ostensibly an autobiographical look at Jodorowsky's childhood, the film diverges quite often from following the story of the child to illustrate the story of the father, perhaps as imagined by the child. My girlfriend, having watched this with me, found this a bit jarring. These two narratives, however, are unified, as one comes to understand the character of the father in The Dance of Reality as a sort of avatar of Alejandro. We all become like our fathers, in at least some ways, and it is our great challenge to differentiate ourselves. It should come as little surprise that part of the abuse heaped upon child-Jodorowsky by his father stems from a desire on the part of the father to slough off any such "weaknesses" that he exhibits.The elder Jodorowsky represents, in this film, a sort of arch anti- magical thinking mindset. Portrayed as a true-blue communist, he rejects religion as an "opiate of the masses." When the child escapes into the world of theosophy as a way to experience happiness outside of the bitter realm of his father, the father reacts by flushing the religious symbols which hold such meaning down the toilet. A thinker like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris will certainly react negatively to such an illustration of a rational thinker. But remember, that in their writings, they essentially patronize the magical-thinker. But this is perhaps too far a digression from the film itself. After all, as the story unfolds, we see Jaime, Jodorowsky's father, going on a sort of picaresque journey of suffering and redemption. Only, unlike most picaresques, the main character experiences transformation, more in the vein of Apuleius's Lucius than Fielding's Tom Jones. During this journey, we see his strongly-held beliefs stripped away from him as his goals are at once realized, hindered, and transformed. The person he was no longer proves to be a trustworthy guide; he must create for himself a new identity, and indeed perhaps discover what he was all along in the process. It's important to look at this film not as an attack on rational thought, but rather an exploration of how catharsis and suffering can help a person develop a stronger self- awareness, and subsequently develop an identity which provides them with greater happiness. As a sometime magical-thinker myself, I can relate to and sympathize with Jodorowsky's point of view. When I like to imagine that there is some sort of divine purpose which guides the river of time, I immediately chastise myself for allowing such intellectual indulgences. I know that it is absurd; at times, I wonder if perhaps that is the very reason why I sometimes believe, why I always want to believe. Heresy, of course. I like to mollify myself by saying that I'm somehow different: what I imagine to be sacred, to be god, differs immeasurably from the simplistic, straight-forward theology that we see so often in our culture. But that feels hollow, like I am simply using what intelligence I have to construct a more complicated, more elaborate and perhaps more fashionable way of putting forward what is still simply a magical thought.Is it cowardice? Perhaps. Perhaps I am simply afraid of being called a lunatic – of thinking myself a lunatic. Certainly, Jodorowsky has no such fears. Although I don't agree with Jodorowsky on what may actually exist and what is true in regards to matters of the spirit, I can't help but admire his willingness to go out on a limb.Watching a film like this, I find in myself a strong desire to dig deeper. What is the real truth of the matter? Was Jodorowsky's real father this much of a tyrant, or a communist? Was his mother so dramatic and bosomy? Just how many cripples and lepers did he encounter as a child, after all? Ultimately, such matters must remain unknowable. We can no more depend upon a child to accurately portray his father than we can depend upon a painter to paint a relation with photo-realism. All we can really depend on is to discover truth through the fabulism present in this work. Core truths which shine through and are your own work, and indeed pleasure, to discover.

After a 23 year absence, Alejandro Jodorowsky returns with "The Dance of Reality". Financed entirely by donations, it is also adapted from Jodorowsky's autobiography of the same name, and the first use of CGI in the directors filmography that usually features nothing but visual flair.Managing to encompass the surreal and absurd-ism of Jodorowsky's early theatre work. The movie focuses on Alejandro's childhood in Tocopilla, Chile, and the abuse his family suffered at the hands of his father Jamie (Played by Jodorowsky's son Brontis). The story also focuses on Jamie's devout love of communism, and setting him on a quest of "enlightenment". One scenario involves becoming a horse groomer in a bid to assassinate right-wing president Carlos Ibanez del Campo.As usual, scenarios get out of hand leading to a movie of visual splendour. However, I would only recommend "The Dance of Reality" to those familiar with the directors previous work. The CGI can be slightly choppy, but nothing that hinders the overall production. The script work is admirable, much of the symbolism is presented by Jodorowsky himself and then subtly included for you to find and decipher. Brontis Jodorowsky gives a fantastic performance, so much so I hope to find more of them and Jeremias Herskovits as the young Alejandro was wonderful also.Final Verdict: If there's anything that "The Dance of Reality" suffers from it is a pacing issue, but upon reflection certain scenes really leave an impression and is wildly different than anything recently released. Jodorowsky's magical biopic is an admirable return to form, and is wonderfully colourful enough to ensure the movies charm for many years to come. 7.5/10.

Anyone interested in cult movies must have heard of Chilean artist Alejandro Jodorowsky – even if, during his 57 year association with the cinema so far, he has only delivered two shorts and seven feature films. With my open-air viewing of his latest effort, I have now watched all of them…having just caught up with the quirky LA CRAVATE (1957), the irritating TEATRO SIN FIN (1965), the exotic adventure TUSK (1980) and even the engrossing feature-length documentary JODOROWSKY'S DUNE (2013). As things stand now, I can divide Jodorowosky's filmography into three symmetrical groups: admirable (EL TOPO {1970}, SANTA SANGRE {1989} and, happily, THE DANCE OF REALITY), enjoyable (LA CRAVATE, TUSK, THE RAINBOW THIEF {1990}) and loathsome (TEATRO SIN FIN, FANDO AND LIS {1968}, THE HOLY MOUNTAIN {1973})… It is not an unknown occurrence in movies that a respected artist takes an inordinately long hiatus from the medium: David Lean, Sergio Leone and Stanley Kubrick are perhaps the most egregious examples…but Jodorowsky's 23 years is probably the lengthiest sabbatical yet! Although he had been threatening to make a sequel to EL TOPO for the last decade – his screenplay of THE SONS OF EL TOPO was even glimpsed sitting on the man's shelves in the aforementioned "Dune" documentary! – it is perhaps unsurprising that it took the now-85-year-old Jodorowsky's most personal project, an adaptation of his own autobiography, to lure him back to the cinema (even if that only came about as a result of a reteaming with his DUNE producer Michel Seydoux). Equally plausible is the fact that, for a man with such a long and varied career, one film would not be enough to tell his whole life-story and, as his young son Adan said in the Q&A which followed the film's screening, Alejandro is currently working on the second installment! I, for one, am looking forward to it… In keeping with the autobiographical nature of the film, his oldest son Brontis (who played the child in EL TOPO) has the lead role here of Jodorowsky's strict businessman father, Cristobal plays a Buddhist mystic who runs around practically naked, Adan plays a long-haired, bespectacled anarchist and Alejandro himself appears as the ruminating guardian angel of his put-upon younger self! Although I would be the first one to admit that I much prefer the Luis Buñuel brand of Surrealism rather than the self-indulgent obscurantist style propagated by the likes of Federico Fellini, Fernando Arrabal (Jodorowsky's own partner in his "Panic" movement days) and David Lynch (the director who ultimately brought DUNE to the big-screen, albeit disastrously, in 1984!), I have to say that sitting through the not unsubstantial 130-minute duration of THE DANCE OF REALITY made me realize that even Jodorowsky's most outre' ideas in his previous films might well have had their seeds in his troubled childhood in the desert Chilean village of Tocopilla.The film can be roughly divided into three segments: the first part concentrates on the boy's physical and mental abuse at the hands of his Ukranian-Jewish father (including vignettes involving red shoes and the fire brigade); the second on the father's ineffectual political activities (including an amusing failed assassination attempt at a best-dressed dog contest and a lengthy episode as the Chilean dictator's horse groomer); and, finally, the prodigal father's return homeward (after suffering from a bout of amnesia following much torture at the hands of the tyrannical regime). The father (incidentally, Brontis' appearance here turns him into a virtual dead ringer for Hollywood actor Peter Sarsgaard!) had been a circus performer and is portrayed as a staunch atheistic Communist, the mother only communicates in operatic arias and the young boy is seen sporting a blonde wig at the latter's insistence (in emulation of her own father's mane) and the former's chagrin. While berating his son for looking effeminate and mingling with the local mystics and mutilated soldiers-turned-paupers, Jodorowsky Sr. is shown consorting with whores, transvestites and political subversives in his weekly night-time trysts to the local tavern.As can be gleaned from a cursory glance at the storyline and as was to be expected from this director, despite the reflective and occasionally even pastoral mood that permeates the proceedings, the film cannot fail but include a surfeit of full-frontal nudity which result in a couple of strong scenes: both father and mother get to shed their clothes but, instead of using it during scenes of sexual activity, the elder Jodorowsky shows his father being humiliated and tortured, himself as a young boy being comforted by his stark-naked, big-breasted mum and the latter miraculously healing her leprosy–stricken husband by urinating on him!! In such a godless environment (where religious relics are dumped into the toilet bowl), even horses can become objects of desire as the Chilean leader is depicted metaphorically having a virtual orgasm while astride his white-maned Bucephalus and, consequently, it is the latter who gets poisoned instead of its owner who is in turn devastated by the loss! The director's typically skewed sense of humour, then, is evident in the recurring presence of a midget barker, forever donning outlandish costumes, in an attempt to draw crowds to Jodorowsky's lingerie shop - but which are mostly unappreciated by his irascible employer! While the occasional longueur does make itself felt (particularly during the second half), the film moves at a surprisingly breezy pace thanks to a compelling narrative and one is certainly thankful for it – especially considering the feature film started screening at around 10:00 p.m.! Jodorowsky's visual artistry is as sharp as ever and one barely realizes that the movie was shot on digital. Adan Jodorowsky's score is definitely an asset and, when asked about what inspired him to write it during the following Q&A session, he mentioned not just his father's self-penned music for EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN but also the works of legendary film composer Bernard Herrmann!