morrison-dylan-fan 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.

MisterWhiplash Alejandro Jodorowsky - a living legend. That may be in part in his mind, but his status as a cult icon has been around for decades; when you make El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Santa Sangre, and have a whole side-line of comic books, "Magic Therapy" sessions (seriously, if you get the blu-ray he advertises it in the liner notes), and of course the legend of the insane achievement that was his adaptation-that-wasn't of Herbert's Dune, it's bound to happen. He also always appears in interviews with an infectious, joyful personality even when he talks about very serious things like art and living and good life and being screwed over in the movie industry (see Jodorowsky's Dune for more on that). But here, he gets to return as a filmmaker, after an absence of decades, and the results? An overused word is appropriate here: fantastic.The Dance of Reality is Jodorowsky's (for him) straight-forward look at what it was like for himself, and his father Jaime, to go through the late 1930's in Chile - but in the only way that Jodorowsky can as one of the last old-school surrealists (by this I mean he could pal around with Salvador Dali like it was nothing). The movie might appear to be two movies: the first half more-so considers how rough things were for poor little 'Alejandrito', especially under rather Jaime Jodorowsky's strict "Be a Man" philosophy of parenting (and, of course, Jodorowsky cast his son, Brontis, to play his father, and the director appears as "himself" in certain parts). The boy has long locks of golden hair, and these get cut off (rather, the wig comes off!) and the boy has to deal with being tickled - "Don't laugh!" - slapped, dentistry without anesthesia, and being picked on by fellow boys for being Jewish.The movie might appear to be all about the kid from the first half... but then Jodorowsky does something really interesting - though it's bound to split audiences - as he really follows the father in the second half (with a couple of trips back to the son, and the mother Sara who sings every one of her lines of dialog). It's both the son AND the father's story in Dance of Reality, and it's touching how the director charts what is kind of a tale of humbling for this father character as he tries, as the staunch anti-dictator Stalin-supporting Communist he is, to kill the ruler of Chile Ibanez, and fails, and goes through many trials and tribulations. Often, we see, with his hands curled in a permanent state of vegetation! Dance of Reality is filled with heart and passion, and what's great about it is how much the director doesn't cheat any of the emotions. Another filmmaker, maybe one more self-conscious or ironic, might play for a wink some of these scenes where the mother talk-sings in her operatic tones and the father beats the boy or the town-folk go about in their crazy ways (sometimes with masks, sometimes it's amputees up in arms, pun intended), or the clowns or lepers or other freaks who the director loves to see on screen. Jodorowsky doesn't play like that; for him, this is all magical realism, surrealism, any-kind-of-WTF-ism you want, but it's not something that is taken precisely as a goof, if that makes sense. Yet it's that which makes many scenes delirious, and deliriously funny. The cure for leprosy, for example, is a howler of a scene, even (or because) as it doesn't make logical sense.Sense? Hey, it's this filmmaker, why not go along for the ride? And it's actually more straightforward and stream-lined than the acid-trip fever dreams of his early/notorious midnight movie work. Here, it's more reflective - it's hard not to compare of course to it's cousin, Fellini's Amarcord, also in the 1930's, about fascism, and big breasts. But I'll continue returning to this film if only for its love of filmmaking, of bringing great big colors on the screen - I don't know how the color timing worked or how much was used, but every color here is vibrant and alive, as if the director were still remembering this like it was today, and it feels that way - and how much the family unit it explored without full-on cynicism. You can look at this father-mother-son and they have their problems and issues (putting it lightly), but... they're real and painful and experience pain and the horrors of society, and persevere.This is a powerful work of brazen, uncompromising, funny-sad-strange-illuminating art for those open to the experience.

jn626262 As a fan of Jodorowsky's earlier films, I was very interested in how the new one would compare. La Danza de la Realidad follows Alejandro Jodorowsky's childhood in Tocopilla, Chile. His tyrannical father is played by his son Brontis, previously seen as El Topo's son. The film begins focusing on Jodorowsky as a kid, then shifts more toward his father. Alejandro Jodorowsky also appears on screen, as himself. A scene I particularly enjoyed was the meeting of the local communists. The digital photography is also very well done. I won't give anything away; you should see it for yourself. This film is one of his best. If you like Jodorowsky, go see it.

Auiliuinti Lair In 1962 at the Cine Diana in Mexico City, Jodorowsky performed an efimero titled "Poema Dinámico Para Un Inmóvil De Hierro" to introduce an iron mural made of metal leftovers called "Mural De Hierro" sculpted by Manuel Felgueréz.51 years later at this same place La Danza De La Realidad was screened.The film is based upon Jodorowsky's childhood in Tocopilla, his hometown before he moved to Santiago and described on 3 of his own literary works: El Niño Del Jueves Negro 80%, Donde Mejor Canta Un Pájaro 10% y La Danza De La Realidad 10%.Seems that Jodorowsky needed to clear an spiritual debt with his origins, and as a result we have this very well done film but nothing compared to his previous works. It happens to me that when i read the book before the film even exists, I very often prefer my own imaginative perspective rather than the one from the director of the film, in this case for La Danza De La Realidad, Jodorowsky's vision was very far away and less creative from what, from previous films (even the ones he does not like:The Rainbow Thief) used to amaze me. The purple ship sailing and commanded by the Death towards the infinite of the sea is an scene that confirms that before he died he needed to meet his past and "forgive" it to be able to rest in peace. A living requiem.To end this review, i can't' stop comparing this film with Fernando Arrabal's Viva La Muerte and noticed that Arrabal dealt with his own childhood traumas on his very first film.El Mural De Hierro was not there anymore.