Synopsis
El Topo decides to confront warrior Masters on a trans-formative desert journey he begins with his 6 year old son, who must bury his childhood totems to become a man.
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Cast
- Alejandro JodorowskyEl Topo
- Brontis JodorowskySon of El Topo
- José LegarretaDying Man
- Alfonso ArauBandit 1
- José Luis FernándezBandit 2
- David SilvaThe Colonel
- Ignacio Martínez EspañaArmless Man
- Mara LorenzioMarah / The Woman
- Paula RomoDesconocida
- Robert JohnHijo del Topo
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Sun-Times
The film exists as an unforgettable experience, but not as a comprehensible one. - 80
Time Out
Inventively composed, beautifully photographed and boasting lakes of blood, shoe fetish action, mystical iconography and dwarf pantomime – often in the same scene – it’s by turns mesmerising, grotesque, surreal, satirical, rousing and impenetrable. - 75
Chicago Reader
More enjoyable for its unending string of outrages than for its capacity to make coherent sense. - 75
Chicago Tribune
One of the classic midnight movies of the Pink Flamingos -- Rocky Horror era, star-director Jodorowsky's metaphysical western about a violent wanderer plays like an especially gun-crazy Sergio Leone saga filtered through several layers of radical European/Latin American cinema and Christian and Buddhist mysticism. Zero cool in its day, it remains a striking film oddity. [16 Feb 2007, p.C4] - 70
The New York Times
El Topo is a good deal more interesting and a good deal less hung up on its own pretensions than all my most intelligent friends had led me to believe. - 67
The A.V. Club
El Topo is never boring, but neither does it hit the trippy heights of something like The Saragossa Manuscript, or the best of Luis Buñuel and Federico Fellini. And with its emphasis on one virile stud's journey to manhood—with women grasping at his cloak—El Topo isn't just drippily New Age-y, it also offers the kind of stealthy paternalism common to the counterculture. - 60
BBC
Without the aid of mind-expanding narcotics though, El Topo can't help looking laughably ramshackle, the combination of bad dubbing, shoddy camerawork and over-the-top performances making it pretty much unwatchable by modern standards. - 60
The Guardian
There is a tenous narrative logic - in which Jodorowsky himself, dressed in cowboy black, must gun down four desert-dwelling killers - which gives the film a measure of watchability. But it's hardly deep.
