The Great Surrealist Comedy: The Holy Mountain

As I had previously championed surrealist movies, I had never envisioned a surrealist film so utterly absurd and putrid as The Holy Mountain directed by Alexandro Jodorowsky.
Its name clearly associates the film with mysticism and religious themes, and thus as we (me, Dom, and Deluca) started watching the movie, we began attempting to disect it for religious and spiritual commentary. The rapid changing of scenes and the absence of much dialogue made it difficult to develop a coherent analysis of the very loose plot, like most surrealist films. However, there was a message that was clear to the viewer: with his use of ubiquitous animal imagery and disgusting sexual scenes, that Alexandro thought that the human species was an unsophificated species and a sex driven, base species. About half of the movie is given to the development of the characters that will make their journey to the holy mountain, which is the place they wish to go to to obtain immorality. He develops these characters individually, who come from different planets (Mars, Venus, Neptune, etc.) and seem to symbolize the different vices of man: greed, manipulation, brutuality, etc. However, to simply state this would be unfair to the ridiculousness of the movie. Each description of the planets and their people get increasingly absurd, especially in terms of gross sexuality. It culminates with the planet, Uranus, of course, where even the most perverted youths will be completely grossed out. And with my luck, we had to watch this scene again because we missed a single line of dialogue, which Deluca refused to miss, therefore he tackled me to obtain the remote and we went back an entire scene which was about 30 minutes and we couldn't go back less than that. This is where the comedy really begins though. These indescrible scenes were so disgusting and revolting that the only way for one to react is with laughter; I have never laughed as hard during any other movie and this one I believe was not intended to be a comedy, at least not a conventional one.
As I have read others reviews on the movie that note Alexandro's mysticism, both before and after I have watched it myself, I am seriously perplexed by how anyone can praise this movie for its spiritual commentary, for the absurd elements of the film override any intellectual comments on a matter so deep. However, I believe that the purpose of the film was to portray religion and spiritualism as completely overshadowed by the putrid qualities of mankind, highlighted by our disgusting sexual minds and the fact that we cannot escape our animalistic nature.
I think that if there is any movie that could possibly destroy film as we know it, it is this movie. As described on the back of the dvd cover by Ben Cobb, "[Holy Mountain] tore apart the very fabric of film." The ending of the movie, which I wont reveil, completely reinforces the essence of The Holy Mountain and has a dual meaning in relation to mysticism and religion.
This movie stands alone in a separate category, it cannot be judged like any other movie. The collective opinion of the movie changed multiple times through the movie, from intrigued and attempting to understand the imagery of movie, to slightly grossed out but still taking it somewhat seriously, to completely grossed out and calling it the worst movie ever, to breaking out in uncontrolled laughter, crying tears of laughter, to the end where we called the ending brilliant. To call this movie brilliant though, I think is contrary to the point of the movie, it is so over-the-top and ridicious that it cannot be mentioned with the likes of classics, but still cannot be associated with complete flops, perhaps because this movie tried to be something unlike anything else.
I think the essence of this movie is best summed up with a quote from the movie itself, "You are excrement, you can turn yourself into gold." This movie is the cinematic equivalent of excrement, it is garbage, it stinks and its foul odor travels for miles, but it is gold; even if its only worth is the comedic merit that I reward it, it is a classic. However, if you plan to watch this film (though I cannot recommend to anyone cause it is so disgusting) don't watch it with your parents or squemish girlfriend cause it will most likely corrupt their clean minds. But if you indeed watch it, be open-minded and don't blame me if it ruins the thoughts of your wonderous childhood full of innocence.