The “holy” in the “holy mountain” stands for “holy fuck what am I witnessing”. Truly the most bizarre thing I've ever experienced. A movie about a spiritual journey, but even that isn't clear considering the ending.
Image1
Lots of symbols and colorful intriguing images, and I'm unsure if those are meant to be the main point of the movie: one crazy image after the other, or a massive bait for those constantly looking for meaning. It's probably both.
A movie which is also very nonchalant about showing ugliness, decadence, filth and deformed people. I actually find this refreshing in contrast with newer movies which feel so sterile in how clean they are: clean actors, clean manners, clean message, clean scenes, a "clean" plot, i.e. so utterly predictable that it won't make anyone think too hard about what is going on. Movies have overall become "nice", where "nice" is the same as in "nice guy", i.e. not nice at all, but on the surface not offensive.
Because even within the hell depicted in the first act, you can still see how there are still hints of light, life and humor. Not from everyone, and it's still quite rare, but it's there, it's vivid.
Image2
Spoiler alert for the ending, here is a footnote that will allow you to skip to the spoiler-free part. 3
Image3
The ending is often interpreted in the all too common mood of our times, i.e. it was all pointless. You've been watching a movie, and one of the main characters tells you to go back to reality.
This isn't how it landed in me. When I contrast the sheer insanity of the first two acts, from the filthy and depraved cities our main character wades through of the first act, and the madness and the utterly deranged power structures the 7 characters work within in the second act, the third act with its simple natural setting struck me as a significant improvement in basically every way.
I do think this movie was about a spiritual journey, that it portrayed genuine spiritual growth and that a quest for a better life is not in vain, but that this doesn't take the form of the coveted immortality, but rather coming back to reality, which sounds incredibly mundane but isn't so when we look at how utterly insane the world portrayed in the movie is, a reflection of perhaps the modern world that was to come. 4
End of spoilers 5
Image: full of desire, distracted, confused
Ultimately this isn't a movie that can really be spoiled through revealing its plot, because the ending is merely one part of an entire journey. And what a truly bizarre journey this was. Definitely the kind of movie that should be experienced more so than talked about.
2 Quote by Dostoevsky from 'Notes from Underground':
> “Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in bliss so that nothing but bubbles would dance on the surface of his bliss, as on a sea... and even then every man, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer libel, would play you some loathsome trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive rationality his fatal fantastic element... simply in order to prove to himself that men still are men and not piano keys.”
Go back to the list of blog posts
2024-05-13
