Montana Sacra (1973)
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A thief seeking the source of gold joins a group of seven people to ascend a holy mountain in search of immortality.
The story
A man known as the thief, who represents The Fool tarot card, travels into a city where he makes money entertaining tourists. After a symbolic act of offering himself to Heaven, he discovers a tower where gold is exchanged for food. Seeking the source of this wealth, he ascends the tower and meets an alchemist. The alchemist takes the thief as an apprentice and introduces him to seven other individuals, each a personification of a planet with specific negative characteristics. Together, they form a group of ten who begin a spiritual journey by boat to Lotus Island to seek the secret of immortality from masters on a holy mountain.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
A man representing The Fool tarot card travels to a city where he is befriended by a footless, handless dwarf. After a symbolic interaction with a wax statue of Jesus, the thief discovers a tower where gold is traded for food. He ascends the tower, meets an alchemist, and is instructed to defecate into a container, which the alchemist transforms into gold. The thief becomes an apprentice and joins a group of seven others, each representing a planet and its negative traits (e.g., Venus as a cosmetician, Mars as a weapons manufacturer). The group of ten travels to Lotus Island, where they are sidetracked by the Pantheon Bar—a cemetery party involving drugs and poetry—before ascending the holy mountain. Each member experiences personal symbolic visions of their fears. Near the summit, the thief is sent back with a prostitute and a chimpanzee, while the others confront the 'immortals,' who are revealed to be faceless dummies. The alchemist then breaks the fourth wall, revealing the film's production apparatus and instructing the audience to return to real life.
- First release year
- 1973
- Runtime (minutes)
- 114
- Production countries
- Mexico
- Original languages
- English; Spanish
- Directors
- Alejandro Jodorowsky
- Writers
- Alejandro Jodorowsky · writer
- Cast and characters
- Alejandro Jodorowsky · the thief; Horacio Salinas; Zamira Saunders
- Genres
- avant-garde; surrealist; drama; independent; LGBTQ-related; experimental; lesbian-related; psychedelic; self-reflexive; magical realism; metaphysical fiction; existentialist
- Themes
- immortality; transformation; symbolism; religion; metaphysics; spiritual exploration
- Tone and mood
- surreal; psychedelic; avant-garde; symbolic
- Premise and plot tags
- spiritual journey; alchemical transformation; tarot symbolism; metaphysical quest
- Source material / true-story basis
- Ascent of Mount Carmel by John of the Cross and Mount Analogue by René Daumal
- Content notes
- animal cruelty
- Reception
- The film received generally favorable reviews, being described as a visual treat rich in symbolism and a defiantly idiosyncratic chapter in Jodorowsky's filmography.
- Reported review scores
- Rotten Tomatoes · score: 85% · review count: 26
- Production trivia
- Jodorowsky and his wife spent a week without sleep under the direction of a Japanese Zen master before filming.; The central members of the cast spent three months doing various spiritual exercises guided by Oscar Ichazo.; Jodorowsky was instructed by Ichazo to take LSD for spiritual exploration and administered psilocybin mushrooms to the actors during a specific scene.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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