Sin #24: The Strange Alchemist

At the beginning we see Fenix naked at an asylum. He doesn’t talk much anymore. We can sense a deep hurt that is slowly consuming him and eventually will turn him into a murderer of women, driven by hallucinations of his dead mother.

Fenix grew up in a circus in Mexico City; his mother was a religious fanatic and head of a strange cult that worshipped a virgin girl with no arms and legs and whose church was erected over a pool of blood (presumably the virgin’s own), his father was a disgusting knife thrower who cheated on his mother and taught Fenix the hard ways of life.

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s haunting “Santa Sangre” may be the most linear and cohesive of his films but it’s also one of his most resonant. He leads us to a heartbreaking journey that’s both twisted and beautiful and at the end we can even sympathize with Fenix’s tortured soul.

Jodorowsky is one of cinema’s great visionaries; for decades some of his films remained hidden by a greedy producer but fortunately they were finally released in DVD as a trilogy (“Fando y Lis”, “El Topo” and “La Montaña Sagrada”). Each of his movies contains extraordinary images that evoke religious iconography and political themes (in “La Montaña Sagrada” there is an astonishing sequence that represents the Spanish conquest through a miniature set and frogs and lizards in full costume).

Jodorowsky is also a very prolific writer and most of his books focus on his own childhood and his extraordinary life. It chronicles a Chilean boy growing under the roof of a vicious and cruel father, becoming an exile and moving to Mexico to work in film and theater and being condemned for creating unsettling art that really pushed the boundaries of its time and finally moving to Europe to settle and grow old in peace. With the years he garnered many fans who understood the religious and erotic motifs (among his admirers was John Lennon who loved “El Topo”, promoting it at the time).

Here’s a chance to experience some of the most audacious and beautiful films you will ever see and admire a true artist who never compromised his vision.