"El Topo" is a very bizarre midnight movie by Alejandro Jodorowsky which gained a cult status. It contains a lot of aggressive and violating pictures, which are very shocking.
In this post I am going to give you some detailed information about a scene, which encapsulates for me the essence of the movie. The following scene is in the middle of the film and separates the film in two "parts". In the first part "el topo" travels around, takes revenge and kills people to be the one and only master. But during his atrocities he starts to be doubtful about his behavior. Now the essential scene begins: He is shot. But he is not dead. Some disdained people saved his life and adore him as a God in a cave. After years he awakes and his new life begins... Now I want to go deeper in the scene, when he awakes after years. The first shot of this scene is a close up of his face and the shoulders. Everything is dark, only himself is illuminated. His appearance has completely changed and there is no background music, you just can hear the sound of fallen drops. The next shot is an establishing shot, showing him sitting on an altar. He realizes his survival. I think this is a very essential scene in this movie, because from this moment on he changed. At the beginning he was a ruthless man, who left his son in the lurch. Now he wants to help the people escaping of the cave and he really takes care of a short-statured woman. For me it seems that he had an epiphany in this cave and now he wants to recover losses.
All in all "El Topo" is movie for aficionados and should be watched carefully.
do you think that he knows that the short lady is the mother of his sons child? because near the end once El Topo's son kills himself we see her carrying the child and he comes back as he was in the beginning of the film and rides off with her and the child.
ReplyDeleteI think, El Topo kills himself at the end of the movie by lighting himself. His son (the little boy from the beginning is now growing up) rides off with the short lady and his newborn stepbrother (the son of the short lady and El Topo). That is, what I understand. Maybe I am wrong.
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