The Dance of Reality movie review (2014)

In the ensuing years, there were rumors of projects that never came together for one reason or another but in recent months, Jodorowsky seems to be all over the place. Earlier this year, there was "Jodorowsky's Dune," a fascinating documentary chronicling his wildly ambitious attempt to bring Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel to the screen with visual designs by the late H.R. Giger, music by Pink Floyd and a cast that would have been led by no less a figure than Salvador Dali. Now there is "The Dance of Reality," a semi-autobiographical work that demonstrates that age has most certainly not mellowed him in the slightest in terms of audacity even while presenting the most personal and emotionally direct work of his career to date. The result will no doubt polarize viewers, as has been the case with his other major works, but it will certainly go down amongst those who see it as one of the most unforgettable films of this or any other year in recent memory.

"The Dance of Reality" offers viewers a semi-autobiographical look at his youth in the remote Chilean town of Tocopilla in the early 1930s with the filmmaker himself serving as both the narrator and as an on-screen guide. The first half focuses on young Alejandro (Jeremias Herskovits) and his complicated relationship with his parents—father Jaime (Brontis Jodorowsky, Alejandro's son) is a Stalin-obsessed brute consumed with making a man out of his seemingly effeminate son by any means necessary; mother Sara (Pamela Flores) is an overly doting type whose every word is literally delivered as an operatic aria. In the second half, the focus shifts to Jaime and his dramatic conversion from communism to radicalism that leads him to abandon his family to set off on a quest to assassinate the hateful military leader, Carlos Ibanez (Bastian Bodenhofer), a mission that threatens to leave him both physically and spiritually crippled as a result.

For those with a working knowledge of Jodorowsky's past efforts, the basic elements of "The Dance of Reality"—ranging from troubled father-son relationships to a fascination with victims of various physical afflictions running the gamut from mutilation to dwarfism—will not seem unfamiliar. What is different this time around is that, for arguably the first time in his career, Jodorowsky has found the confidence to communicate his ideas to audiences in a direct and unapologetically emotional manner without falling back on his usual distancing techniques such as surreal imagery and extreme violence that made a film like "El Topo" so radical in its day (and which, to be frank, make it a little tiresome to endure nowadays).

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46tn55llJa7pLGMqJ1mqpWWuarA2GZpaWlk