Jodor­owsky as the mago in The Holy Moun­tain.

There are two dri­ves that pro­pel peo­ple to pro­duce a work of art, one pri­vate one pub­lic. On the one hand, they have an urge for what­ev­er rea­son to express them­selves. And on the oth­er, they fall in love with a medi­um, be it film, the album, the nov­el or what­so­ev­er. And, despair­ing at what today’s prac­ti­tion­ers are doing with it, they feel com­pelled to cre­ate some­thing interesting.

I was think­ing about this while watch­ing the new Bond film, and good­ness knows I had plen­ty of time to drift off. Before the delights of see­ing Daniel Graig shuf­fle so grumpi­ly from scene to scene look­ing for all the world like a labour­er forced to wear a bor­rowed suit for the day — and by the bye, declaw­ing Bond of his class is like reliev­ing a great white shark of its teeth — we were treat­ed to a brace of trailers.

John and Yoko were big fans and launched El Topo in NY.

And for six or sev­en min­utes, var­i­ous cos­tumed per­form­ers, played by actors, stood where they were told to, spout­ing por­ten­tous inani­ties, as on the green screens behind them a suc­ces­sion of com­put­er gen­er­at­ed foes and per­ils appeared with impres­sive, dull precision.

And as inter­change­able lines of dia­logue were mechan­i­cal­ly mouthed – they could have been from any of the oth­er films in the fran­chise, or for that mat­ter, from any of the rival fran­chis­es, but for the record the pair in ques­tion were Bat­man V Super­man and Star Wars – all the seats around me shook, phys­i­cal­ly.

For the entire dura­tion of the trail­ers, our ears were pum­melled by an onslaught of dig­i­tal­ly enhanced sounds, and our eyes were assailed by frame after frame, jam-packed with as much stuff as it was phys­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble to cram into them.

It was the cin­e­mat­ic equiv­a­lent of being trapped in a pound shop on steroids. They clear­ly think that if they can force as much junk as pos­si­ble into the one space and bom­bard our sens­es with it, no one will notice how uncon­nect­ed each of the indi­vid­ual bits are, and what lit­tle sub­stance there is behind the packaging.

El Topo.

No won­der Graig is so grumpy. He’s just an inel­e­gant clothes horse around whom are placed as many over­priced prod­ucts as it’s pos­si­ble to pack into each and every frame.

What a fan­tas­tic time to be film mak­er. There is so much to rail against.

Both those dri­ves, the need to express him­self and the urge to do some­thing inter­est­ing with the medi­um, are glo­ri­ous­ly in evi­dence in the few films we have from the won­der­ful Chilean film mak­er Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky. Jodor­owsky is what a hip­py would look like, if being a hip­py didn’t express­ly for­bid you from pur­su­ing any of your activ­i­ties with any sort of actu­al intent.

He has spent his life expand­ing his con­scious­ness in the pur­suit of spir­i­tu­al sal­va­tion, by delv­ing into the inner recess­es of his sub­con­scious. He first burst onto the inter­na­tion­al film scene with the acid west­ern El Topo in 1970, which effec­tive­ly invent­ed the idea the cult film and sin­gle-hand­ed­ly launched the mid­night film scene in New York.

Jodor­owsky with his son Bron­tis in El Topo.

John and Yoko were so impressed, Lennon put up $1m for his next film, The Holy Moun­tain, in ’73. Which, inevitably, proved to be some­thing of a damp squib and is, truth be told, hope­less­ly self-indulgent.

After an abortive and out­landish­ly expen­sive attempt to film Frank Herbert’s cult sci-fi nov­el Dune – which David Lynch would sim­i­lar­ly make a mess of — he moved to Paris and spent the next decade or so read­ing tarot cards. But in ’89 he made a tri­umphant return with the qui­et­ly bonkers San­ta San­gre, and then The Rain­bow Thief in ’90, before dis­ap­pear­ing once more into the artis­tic wilderness.

But in 2013 he re-emerged to much applause when he pre­sent­ed his lat­est film, The Dance of Real­i­ty, at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Osten­si­bly an auto­bi­og­ra­phy chart­ing his lone­ly child­hood in pre WWII Chile, it is both about the stormy rela­tion­ship he had as a boy with his macho father, and an attempt by the now old­er artist to rec­on­cile him­self to his father’s memory.

Bron­tis play­ing Jodor­owsky’s father (and his grand­fa­ther) in The Dance of Reality.

It is of course and as ever entire­ly bonkers but in a com­plete­ly good way. At one point for instance, his father wakes up to dis­cov­er the hunch­backed dwarf with whom he’s been sleep­ing has paint­ed tat­toos all over his paral­ysed arm in his sleep. And as he is walk­ing down the road pon­der­ing this, he is met by a Catholic priest who looks at him dis­ap­prov­ing­ly and places an enor­mous taran­tu­la on his with­ered arm, before walk­ing off again. Nei­ther he nor the spi­der are referred to again.

Imag­ine a Bunuel film direct­ed by Felli­ni and peo­pled by amputee dwarves and hunch­backs. But in a good way.

What ele­vates this from all the oth­er Jodor­owsky films is that for once, the intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty, mytho­log­i­cal arche­types and spir­i­tu­al yearn­ing are matched here by an emo­tion­al invest­ment that makes for a sur­pris­ing­ly mov­ing film.

He’s 86 now, and is busy work­ing on the fol­low-up. I hope some­one has the good sense to give him the fund­ing he needs. The cin­e­ma needs peo­ple like him to keep us all sane.

You can see the trail­er for The Dream of Real­i­ty here. And the trail­er for El Topo here.

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