Brontis Jodorowsky | This Week in New York

Alejandro Jodorowsky guides his younger self (Adan Jodorowsky) through Endless Poetry

Alejandro Jodorowsky guides his younger self (Adan Jodorowsky, his real-life son) through Endless Poetry

ENDLESS POETRY (POESIA SIN FIN) (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 2016)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Opens Friday, July 14
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com
www.endlesspoetrythemovie.com

Eccentric auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky, the mastermind behind such midnight-movie classics as 1971’s El Topo and 1973’s The Holy Mountain, once again turns his magical realist eye on his own life as a young poet in Chile in the 1940s in Endless Poetry, picking up where he left off in the autobiographical saga he began in 2013’s The Dance of Reality, his first film in more than two decades. Starting with his family’s departure from the village of Tocopilla for the big city of Santiago, where Jodorowsky’s father, Jaime (Brontis Jodorowsky), opened a clothing shop, the film quickly dispenses with any pretense of realist narrative as it explodes into a phantasmagoric bildungsroman, shot in eye-popping color by master Hong Kong cinematographer Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love, Last Life in the Universe). With one son, Brontis, playing his father; another son, musician Adan, playing Alejandro as a young man (he also composed the score); his grandson, Jeremías Herskovits, portraying him as a boy (Alejandrito); and occasional appearances by himself as . . . himself, interacting with his onscreen/offscreen family, Alejandro mixes time, space, and storytelling with a strong dose of the psychotherapeutic and shamanic blend he calls Psychomagic. To further the incestuous casting, Sara, his mother, and Stella Díaz Varín, his muse and lover, are played by the same actress, opera singer Pamela Flores, while his circle of friends, most of whom went on to become respected poets (Leandro Taub as the wild and crazy Enrique Lihn, Flores as Diaz Varín, Felipe Rios as Nicanor Parra), clowns, near-döppelgangers, little people (Julia Avendaño is a stand-out as Pequeñita), masked skeletons and devils, sex and nudity, and exuberant tarot card readers tumble off the screen in this disturbing, often surreal, but somehow endearing and engaging tale of the artist as a young man, searching for the meaning of his life as well as life in general.

endless poetry 2

Reminiscent of Federico Fellini’s semiautobiographical Oscar-winning Amarcord, Endless Poetryis one of Jodorowsky’s most approachable works, centering on the familiar Romantic struggle of a young male artist coming-of-age against his petit bourgeois family and oppressive society, represented here by the rise of real-life dictator Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (Bastián Bodenhofer). A sly sense of humor and fondness for his youthful follies and friends brighten the proceedings, as does the spectacular production design by Alejandro himself. The final scenes of young Jodorowsky’s departure for Paris demonstrate that this old master still has the power to move an audience with strange and beautiful images that shock and unsettle — especially if one knows exactly how intertwined the relationships of the actors are with the characters they play. Endless Poetry opens July 14 at the Landmark Sunshine, with Alejandro participating in Q&As after the 7:00 show and before the 10:00 show on opening night and with Adan following the 7:00 show on July 15.

Alejandro Jodorowsky visits his hometown and his childhood self (Jeremias Herskovits) in THE DANCE OF REALITY

THE DANCE OF REALITY (LA DANZA DE LA REALIDAD) (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 2013)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Opens Friday, May 23
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com
www.danceofrealitymovie.com

Cult legend Alejandro Jodorowsky’s first film in twenty-three years is a deeply intimate, visually stunning journey into his childhood, a surreal Amarcord as only he can make it. In the gorgeous The Dance of Reality, the man behind such midnight-movie classics as 1970’s El Topo and 1973’s The Holy Mountain travels back to his hometown, the small coastal village of Tocopilla, Chile, where he relives and reimagines seminal moments in his life. The eighty-four-year-old Jodorowsky is often on-screen, melding past, present, and future, as his younger self (Jeremias Herskovits), sporting a gloriously ridiculous mound of golden curls, wanders among circus performers, amputees, and other oddballs and disenfranchised souls that would make Fellini proud. It’s a dazzling family affair in more ways than one: Jodorowsky’s son Brontis plays his father, Jaime, a Stalinist with a rather strong dislike for Chilean leader Carlos Ibáñez (Bastian Bodenhöfer), while son Adan plays the town anarchist (and composed the score) and son Cristóbal is a mystical theosophist. Jodorowsky’s mother, Sara (Pamela Flores), always wanted to be a singer, so he has the buxom woman deliver all her lines as if she is in an opera. And his wife, painter Pascale Montandon-Jodorowsky, designed the fantabulous costumes. “You and I have only been memories, never reality,” Jodorowsky says in voice-over. “Something is dreaming us. Give yourself to the illusion. Live!” Indeed, The Dance of Reality is like a dream, bathed in spectacular color and boasting a triumphant spirit even as death beckons.

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s first film in twenty-three years is a colorful melding of past, present, and future

Even the publicity for the film is handled with typical Jodorowskian flourish. “I see no difference between poetry and film. I see no difference between stripping the body and the soul naked. I am who I am,” he says in an online video introduction in which he sits completely naked, adding, “In full honesty, undressed boy, undressed soul, in pure poetry.” Jodorowsky (Santa Sangre, Fando y Lis) undresses himself for all to see in The Dance of Reality, a lovingly poetic and personal work of art beautifully shot by Jean-Marie Dreujou. It is Jodorowsky, so it’s also wild and unpredictable, flabbergasting and confusing, mesmerizing and charming. It also marks a new phase in the career of the comic-book writer, philosopher, playwright, and self-described “atheist mystic” who vows not to wait another two decades for his next film (and not just because he is in his mid-eighties) and is currently preparing a MoMA exhibition that might involve him reading tarot cards for museum visitors. “Films should have a purpose, to open our consciousness,” he says in that video introduction. The Dance of Reality is another fascinating stop on Jodorowsky’s continuing voyage of opening people’s consciousness and, perhaps, as he adds, to “begin to change the world.”