Alejandro Jodorowsky's film "The Holy Mountain" at first glance just seems like an incomprehensible melange of shockingly violent and sexual, vividly psychedelic and disparate images. It doesn't have a standard plot or narrative, and that might lead a less-reflective viewer to miss the critical message of the film and to instead be mesmerized by the spectacular images.
The shallow interpretation would take the film as saying "find your own spiritual enlightenment by living your real life." First, this ignores how scathing and blasphemous the whole of the preceding scenes are towards religion and spirituality in general: Jesus reduced to a thief; to a mass produced wax and plaster trash mountain; gibbering priests; Jewish rabbis playing with shit; the narcissistic absurdity of mystical ritual meditation (looking at one's reflection in a bucket of water), et al. Each depiction of the holy is tied to massacre and sexual debauchery. Secondly, this is precisely the shallow, dull interpretation because spirituality and its everlasting, meaning-giving journey is in vogue today more than ever.
What was in its infancy in the late 60s and early 70s baby-boomer "counter-culture" has become the standard everyday standpoint of jaded gen xers, conformist millennials, and oh-so-unique and original gen zers who are completely oblivious to how history apparently repeats itself: "first as a tragedy, then as a farce" and then endlessly, naively repeating the tropes of romanticism. There's nothing at all provocative, original or interesting today about the search for meaning or for spiritual enlightenment. It's a lucrative cottage industry of new-age self-help and therapy babble: you yourself are split into conscious and unconscious, and alienated from the world, split again into subject and object. It even reaches rarified form with philosophers and theologians who point out that they, too, have never given up their dogmas about meaning and the "threat of nihilism". One can't go a day without hearing someone quote Alan Watts or Buddha. Every yuppie and "alt" personality proclaims their "inner hippy". Every other Karen who watches morning talk shows does yoga and can read tarot cards or tell you how the waxing and waning of the moon will affect your wallet and love life: "some big changes are coming, that's for sure!" Watered down Eastern mysticism, vitalism, phenomenoloy, and pan-psychism has filled in the gaps for all those who find heaven a bit boring with its promise of eternal hallelujahs and amens.
The film, even if against the intentions of its director who is ever the lover of esoteric and alchemical symbols, points to the futility of the search for spiritual enlightenment in all its exoteric and esoteric guises, the search for the reason behind all reasons-- the idea that once you get to the top of the "mountain", your purview will allow you to see further, to transcend the ego or "self", to finally get to the bottom of things. The Alchemist atop the mountain, the final guru is just another man. There is no spiritual absolute, no final meaning to grasp. The ending, with its breaking of the fourth wall -- "goodbye to the holy mountain, life awaits us" -- shows that the path of spiritual enlightenment, the "journey" to find the unity of self and being, to be at home in the spiritual realm with its "sacred traditions", to find the reason or meaning of it all can't help but fall into groundlessness and self-destruction. It's a fool's errand. One also has to notice how the thief-jesus main character sacrifices many along the way without much thought. He is precisely a thief because the spiritual journey, the search for meaning, keeps one from living in real life, but instead mires one in illusion and magic.
The whole search for the ultimate meaning, the holiest of holiest, the highest ranking principle of all principles throws one back to where one began, but now with the circle complete, one has traversed through the teachings of the spiritual gurus of all the planets, of all religious worlds-- and what was it they taught? Precisely their nullity and falsity, their absolute absurdity and hypocrisy. So sensuously rich in image, but completely barren in terms of "spiritual teachings"-- i.e. any content that could self-evidently justify its claim to authority over all others. How stupid, myopic, and debased they all are. How to turn shit into gold (i.e. cope) by ascetic practices, or engaging in absurd rituals or repeating meaningless mantras, how to fulfill sexual or martial desires/fantasies (have your emotions taken advantage of instead of reflecting on their presuppositions). The essence of every "God" in the film is a banal, materialistic interest clothed in spiritual garb. It's not simply an attack on "inauthentic ritual", not a call for "genuine ritual" or authentic spiritual practice, but pointing to something even more scathing and atheistic in its orientation. It is ridiculous the search itself.
Even if Jodorowsky's intention were to throw this search for meaning back on to the viewer at the end, who must search deep within themselves and their own life, who must take responsibility for reflecting about the possibility of the meaning of being, then one doesn't at all escape the solipsistic nihilism which one is so sure the search for higher meaning, hidden sacred traditions, and spiritual orientation is an immunization against. This "nihilism" and despair is nothing but the necessary shadow produced by the light of so-called spiritual enlightenment to begin with: not some kind of primordial state caused by a lack of reflection on the true meaning of Being, of the mystical revealing itself.
Comments
Post a Comment