MOLAA goes beyond the beyond with this outdoor nighttime screening of Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s mind-debriding psychopompic western El Topo, the story of a man and a gun and some human beings who get on the wrong side of both. But this isn’t like Leone, though there’s certain common moments of desolation between the two. Instead, El Topo plays like a de Chirico painting put in motion by Coffin Joe with soundtracking by La Monte Young or Terry Riley—minimalism and surrealism and violence and allegory all wired together for the purpose of re-wiring the viewer’s mind. “I am living in a normal body, but my mind is not normal,” Jodorowsky once told a reporter. Take that as a threat, a promise, a diagnosis or an invitation to one of the most potent cult films of all time.
Thu., July 1, 7 p.m., 2010
