Shot in Mexico on a modest budget with mostly unknown actors and released in 1973, Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain has rightfully earned its place in cinema history as one of the first truly cult films despite being a flop at the Cannes Film Festival.

The film’s appeal and charm lie partly in its sincere metaphysical musings and mischievous tongue-in-cheek satire, and partly in its scarcity. It was given only a limited run of screenings in the late-night cinemas of New York and San Francisco and not released widely until three decades after its debut, making it nearly impossible to find until relatively recently.

It used to be that you had to know someone who knew someone with a rare copy if you wanted to make the pilgrimage to the mountain yourself – creating a mystique that became the perfect match for the dream-like occult symbolism and philosophy woven into its cinematic language.

If his previous film El Topo (1970) was a surrealist gunslinging acid-western revenge tale exploring themes of redemption, violence and self-discovery on the level of the individual, then The Holy Mountain is an epic philosophical fiction that drills deeper into the same themes and concepts except this time at the level of the collective.

Film directors such as Darren Aronofsky, Ben Wheatley, Harmony Korine, and Gaspar Noé have cited it as an inspiration. Still, over the years its influence has spread much further afield, particularly in the realm of music where its distinctive, striking imagery and seductive symbolism have become a treasure trove of inspiration for artists and musicians alike.

The film’s connections to the music industry run deep: produced by Allen Klein, with funding from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, it was even rumoured that George Harrison was considered for the role of the Thief.

Nods to iconic scenes from The Holy Mountain have found their way into music videos by MGMT, Marilyn Manson, and Travis Scott. It has been embraced by artists ranging from mainstream acts like Kanye West to more niche figures like London’s psych noise-rockers Bo Ningen, who wrote a unique score performed liveat EartH Hackney earlier this year.

More so than in any of his other works, high-brow art and pop culture collide, where the visual and sonic subcultural language of rock and roll and psychedelia coexist and complement each other alongside the film’s conversation with the surrealist tradition, avant-garde theatre, Hermetic Renaissance art, and mysticism.

This freewheeling disregard for convention echoes the ethos and spirit that has always been the life-giving energy fueling the heart of rock and roll, which at that time of the film’s release was truly pushing the boundaries of what was possible both sonically and visually in art and fashion alike with full force.

As was the case for The Holy Mountain, it was always vital for rock music to adopt an eclectic bricolage approach that appropriated, recycled, and juxtaposed motifs both old and new, low-brow and high, sacred and profane to stay relevant and revolutionary. A small sample of seminal albums released in 1973 include Raw Power, The Dark Side of the Moon, Countdown to Ecstasy, Larks Tongues in Aspic and Aladdin Sane – albums that did as much to advance their respective medium forward as Jodorowsky’s film has done for cinema and surrealist art.

Yet, the cultural legacy that makes the film compelling can also create barriers to embracing it. The cult classic status attracts viewers curious about its reputation, but it can also be an unfortunate hindrance that runs the risk of casting the film in a vaguely off-putting, pseudo-spiritual light.

The fascination it inspires often hinges on the promise of finding something profound nested in between the frames, initiating you into some kind of secret knowledge – an experience that can be both challenging and rewarding, but also easily misunderstood and which can breed disappointment when that elusive truth takes on a different form other than the one subconsciously anticipated or hoped for.

For Jodorowsky, misunderstanding isn’t a failure but an invitation to engage deeper with the language of dreams and mystery. As he put it: “In order to really know a song, you need to listen to it a lot of times… Why show a picture you can only see one time? I will make pictures you cannot understand only one time.”

You might wonder for example why brightly coloured paint is used in violent scenes instead of realistic crimson red blood, or why the troupe of working girls who accompany the Thief in the city have a pet chimpanzee. The film is not meant to be fully understood in a single viewing but revisited, with new details and layers of meaning unveiled like a pack of Tarot cards or through repeat sessions in therapy.

The film’s rather loose narrative begins with the Thief (Horacio Salinas), an abject and debased Christ-like figure embodying the Jungian archetype of the Fool, awakening in a rocky, desolate valley where he is taunted and mocked by children. He befriends a limbless cripple and together they wander through a city whose culture is characterised by an unhinged circus of violence, exploitation, domination and submission, lurid sex, debauchery and voyeurism.

Within only 10 short minutes of screen time, the audience is confronted with a world where fascist soldiers march and carry skinned and crucified dogs in formation, dozens of protesters are executed summarily by firing squad as bourgeois men and women kneel dressed in evening wear performing a strange lethargic dance, while women are openly abused in the street by soldiers only to be photographed and filmed by frenzied spectators who seem unable to process these atrocities through anything but the enthusiastic clicking of camera shutters.

Following a series of devastating humiliations, the Thief scales a tall tower spurred on equally by curiosity and a desperate desire to flee the horrors he has both participated in and been subjected to. Here he meets the Alchemist (portrayed by Jodorowsky himself), who offers him a chance to transform himself – to turn “excrement into gold”. He joins a group of disillusioned ruling-class figures, each representing a planetary archetype in our solar system and each embodying a particular human vice associated with it, all of whom seek enlightenment and immortality.

Under the Alchemist’s guidance,they set out to scale the Holy Mountain. As the group prepares to ascend the mountain, they face a series of lessons and trials that challenge their commitment to the work that lies ahead. Their task thus becomes a process of stripping away the ego and other illusions, revealing the absurdity and vacuousness of their prior pursuits.

Jodorowsky’s ideology critique of capitalist commodification and consumerism comes alive in scenes like Isla’s introductory section. The sexually liberated weapons manufacturer, played by Adriana Page, struts confidently around her factory with her short-cropped hair and stylish purple suit, flanked by her obedient male secretaries. Isla’s factory produces weapons marketed to revolutionary counterculture groups and religious communities, creating a jarring irony.

Vibrantly colourful psychedelic rock and roll rifles shaped like electric
guitars, Menorah-shaped revolvers for Jews, and Buddha-adorned weapons
for Buddhists. Her company also experiments with combat drugs designed to “induce delusions of grandeur”, akin to stimulants produced by military R&D divisions.

Page delivers Isla’s lines in a flat monotone with an apparent lack of self-awareness regarding the absurdity of her lifestyle, underscoring a sardonic commentary on a cynical world where supposedly resolute beliefs and convictions don’t seem to matter all that much because they can be appropriated, packaged up neatly, and sold back to you on the market just like any other commodity.

The Pantheon Bar, another memorable vignette, is a haven at the base of the mountain for pilgrims who began their journey of self-discovery but became stuck both physically and psychologically. It is a garden of Bacchanalian delights, where wine flows endlessly, song and dance never cease, and everyone pats themselves on the back for their half-arsed spiritual achievements.

One reveller boasts of having conquered the Holy Mountain – only horizontally, not vertically – while another spouts banal, drug-induced observations (“The Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a trip, man!”) as he stuffs his face with hallucinogenic jelly beans in the belief that the essence of the mountain is contained in the drug itself.

In many ways, the Pantheon is a distorted reflection of the decadence and debauched excesses of the city in which the Thief began his journey, populated by people who are as psychologically stagnant and behave as bizarrely as those townsfolk he encounters there.

However, these individuals have gone an extra step by also deluding themselves into believing they’ve reached terminal Zen, with no more work to be done so why not celebrate at the bar with acid and bad poetry? They serve as a warning against superficial engagement with higher ideals, a caricature of defanged 60’s hippie idealism degenerating into solipsistic hedonism, contrasting sharply with earlier scenes of genuine psychic struggle.

The film’s climax is both revealing and ironically anti-climactic. There are no gods or sage kings perched on top of the mountain and the forbidden fruit of immortality is shown to be equally elusive – it has been a trick, a grand illusion, the final one to conquer.

The only wisdom the group is treated to in the denouement is the realisation that their quest for meaning lies not in transcending samsara but in opening themselves to the world without it becoming merely an appendage of their egos as it had been their entire lives. Their fates are left ambiguous. As the camera zooms out revealing the film set in a final postmodern twist, the audience too is left alone to reflect on what they have witnessed, having been shown that the door to personal transformation may also be open to them – but one must stew in their own filth first.

As the camera zooms out revealing the film set in a final postmodern twist, the audience too is left alone to reflect on what they have witnessed, having been shown that the door to personal transformation may also be open to them – but one must stew in their own filth first.