A Meditation on 'The Holy Mountain'
And becoming.
“You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold.”
This past weekend I got to see a screening of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain on 35mm, and the experience was transformative. Jodorowsky’s 1973 film defies both description and critique, and yet, I feel compelled to meditate on the experience of seeing this masterpiece on such a grand scale.
The show began with a pre-film celebration (complete with cake) of Jodorowsky’s 96th birthday, which happened back in February. A screen in the lobby played Santa Sangre. As people gathered, sometimes in attire reflecting the subject matter of the evening, the anticipation only grew. No movie alone at home can compare to a movie in the company of an audience of likeminded weirdos.
The Holy Mountain began with a sparse introduction from Scream Screen curator and host Theresa Mercado. Judging by the hands raised at the question, something like half of the audience was a newcomer. All the better, then, as Mercado suggested, to simply go into the film without much ado. The film speaks for itself, and the first time with The Holy Mountain is a special thing.
The thing is, it felt like my first time even though it wasn’t: the experience seeing the film on a big screen, and on a 35mm print no less, was revelatory.
Film is a transformational medium. In the most literal sense, film is transformed by exposure to light. Like The Alchemist, played by Jodorowsky himself, filmmakers transform nothingness into somethingness. Beyond that, though, film has the capacity to transform the viewer, to transfigure the spectator into someone or something else entirely during a film’s runtime. The Holy Mountain is precisely the sort of film that transforms the viewer like an alchemist’s process. We become travelers, pilgrims, seekers. We become.
For a trans person like myself, the becoming is the point. In search of the holy mountain of self, of a life that feels lived rather than acted, owned rather than borrowed, we make the trek to the summit. At the peak, the promise of perfection becomes the promise of life. A life lived, rather than acted. Film can do this too, can offer us, however temporary, a transfiguration in the image of the universal spectator.
The spectator of The Holy Mountain is a far cry from Mulvey’s theorized “male gaze” or any such structure of viewing. Instead, this spectator is a fluid entity, one who embodies the process of becoming as a joy in and of itself. Far from fixed, Jodorowsky’s viewer is, in essence, a wanderer and a shapeshifter. In other words, the hypothetical spectator of The Holy Mountain is not a man or woman but an idealized fluctuating spectator, one in the process of viewing. The Holy Mountain is the ultimate spectatorial exercise, a film about watching a film.
To become is to abandon preconceptions of self. To watch a film, especially a film like The Holy Mountain, is to abandon preconceptions of reality. Film is an act of becoming.