Staying true to his original plan, this film picks up exactly where the first film in the intended five film cycle, The Dance of Reality, left off. Alejandro (Jeremías Herskovits) is leaving the relative tranquility of Tocopilla with his sternly entrepreneurial father (Brontis Jodorowsky), his (non-stop) opera singing mother (played by soprano Pamela Flores), and the actual Alejandro Jodorowsky (on hand for verbal annotations and general encouragement for his younger self). They are bound for Santiago, where the family store can thrive, the extended family can be placated and Alejandro (younger) can study to become a doctor.
Thing is, Alejandro (younger) has taken to reading Lorca (the maricón poet) and he has his heart set on becoming a poet in his own right.
It's not like we don't know how this ends up; Jodorowsky (actual) did hit the art world pretty hard, but he brings such eccentric flourish to this extension of his coming of age that even the most stock standard developmental tropes are given over to ferocious creativity. And when Jodorowsky finally settles into his artistic life (within a suitably bizarre artists collective) the joyous relief is nothing less than exultant.
It is at this point that things start to fold in on themselves. Jodorowsky's grandson, Adan, who had already taken on his grandfather's guise as Fenix in Santa Sangre, takes over from Herskovits as his grandfather in establishing poet phase and Flores drops the opera recitative and grabs hold of Jodorowsky's scrotum (literally) as his hard-living muse, Stella Díaz Varín, (she's now playing his mother and his lover - in beautifully differentiated performances).
The conflation of reality and performance here (remember, Jodorowsky himself is still very much in frame) brings immediacy to what otherwise would have felt entirely fantastical. It also, in a strangely counter-intuitive way, helps to overcome the inherent self-importance of a five film memoir - as if by playing to the back of the house, Jodorowsky makes the exercise more intimate.
I did shudder slightly at his handling of some of the queer elements of the film, which (though sweet) predominantly serve to reinforce Jodorowsky's heterosexuality. It is a curiously self-aggrandising thread that isn't tied tightly enough to the fight for creative inspiration which presents as the film's binding universality. While the liberation and soaring artistic expression of Endless Poetry, as well as its predominantly queer outsider aesthetic, easily override these egotistical assertions, they do highlight the difficulties inherent in recalibrating memoir into artistic mythology.
The next film, whatever is gets titled, should be a doozy. France, Fernando Arrabal, Roland Topor and the Panic Movement. It will probably close the feedback loop on Jodorowsky's artistic career, bringing us up to his first feature film, Fando and Lis. Then I'm hoping he'll take us beyond in some sort of fucked up recreation/making of what comes after. I'd love to see an interpretive staging of the riot that went down at the Mexican premiere of Fando and Lis and who could say no to unpacking the making of The Holy Mountain.
Whatever comes, we can be assured that it is going to be singular. Like Jodorowsky's life.
★★★★
This post contributes to Director Focus: ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY.
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