Reviews

The Holy Mountain is a piece of crap. The director Alejandro Jodorowsky seems to be still living in the 60's crazy days of Flower Power. However, the movie was released is 1975. The dream was over, the reality was cruel (the Vietnam war, America Latina's dictators etc), and there was no scape from the insanity of real life.

This film is too symbolic that looks like some stupid story written by a 18 LSD addicted boy. There are no plot, no script, no characters, no performances. Some scenes resemble Pasolini's Salo (e.g., the faeces been boiled), but lacking the social context of the latter. Besides, the few dialogs resemble B science fiction movies from the 50's: "I am from Mars", or "I am from Venus". Come on, guys! Where is the so-called ingenious director? A mess of ideas is not enough to build a strong movie. A lot of people sweep the net in search for The Holy Mountain. Please, do not waste your time. The film is boring and an anachronism, a naive attempt to show the typical trait of a time that has gone. A good friend of mine told me this is a pop masterpiece. I guess he is out of his mind. Not even Jodorowsky should know what he did here.

Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol isn't just a good Brazilian movie. This is an actual masterpiece, compared to the big ones in the history of cinema. It's not a boring and too regional film, but deals with universal aspects of human nature, such as blind devotion, love, hate, and all kinds of misery. Glauber Rocha, with only 22 years, made a mix of Eisenstein, Italian neo-realism and nouvelle-vague, under a background of cordel literature (our pulp fictions). The Mauricio do Valle character, Antonio das Mortes, is fundamentally a European western anti-hero, and certainly inspired Leone, Corbucci and others in the development of their scripts. The soundtrack, with Villa Lobbos and Rocha&Ricardo songs, matches perfectly with the dry landscape of the Brazilian Northeast. In short, Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol must be known. If you have open mind and like great cinema, and not just the popcorn no-brain north-American blockbusters, try this one.