'The mole is an animal that digs tunnels. In is quest for the sun, his path sometimes brings him to the surface; and when he sees the sun, he is blinded.'
This was Alexandro Jodorowsky's first recognised cult movie in the early seventies. Shot in Mexico, El Topo (or the mole in English) is a gunslinger (played by Jodorowsky), who, dressed completely in black leather, rides on his horse with his seven year-old son through the desert; until they come across a massacre of people. One of the survivors tells El Topo who the culprits are, and he then takes on the guise of God and seeks revenge. After this, the film goes off in a surreal and bizarre direction, with scenes of violence, racism, passion and pain. An easy candidate for a cult movie.
"El Topo is a movie it's very hard to be sure about after a single viewing. It weaves a web about you, and you're left with two impulses. One is to accept it on its own terms, as a complex fantasy that uses violence as the most convenient cinematic shorthand for human power relationships. The other is to reject it as the work of a cynic, who is simply supplying more jolts and shocks per minute than most filmmakers. The first impulse seems sounder to me, because if Jodorowsky were simply in the blood-and-gut sweepstakes he could have make a much simpler, less ambitious movie that would have had the violence of El Topo but not its uncanny resonance." - Roger Ebert ****
"If you're great, El Topo is a great picture. If you're limited, El Topo is limited." - Alexandro Jodorowsky
"Jodorowsky's performance is hypnotic." - Philip Strick, Sight & Sound
"A masterpiece." - Pauline Kael
Read the El Topo script
