On Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre movie

[Kyriakos]

Two days ago I saw this movie, Santa Sangre, which translates to "Holy Blood". It was made in 1989. I hadn't seen any other work by this director so didn't really know what to expect.
The movie doesn't waste much time in becoming very brutal. Already in the first 16 min there is a memorable scene with a sect's church and its holy idol, 'Santa Sangre'. The idol is a statue of a schoolgirl, with no hands, because the actual person was murdered in that way and raped while she bled to death.
Their church ends up being demolished, right after a member of the catholic church declares it as heretical.

The Santa Sangre makes a second appearance not much later... But this time it is the goriest scene of the movie, and I have to place in a spoiler, despite the description of it being very brief.

Spoiler :

the protagonist's father cuts off both arms of his mother

.

The film has roughly 90 more minutes to go from that development (death of the mother). In my view the rest of the movie isn't that shocking, and therefore the center of everything is in the two Santa Sangre scenes (also presented in the title of the movie itself).

The protagonist ends up as a serial killer. In my view - this is supported by a few things he says - he identified with his killed mother and the victims, but had to try to identify with the aggressor (the father in this film) as well. The end result is that he cannot be with any woman. In fact he even tries to be with a woman just because she is a wrestler and very strong, and in the end asks her to break his arms

Overall, I think this movie wasn't balanced that well. But it doesn't matter that much, since I don't believe I have seen before anything as shocking as its two core scenes in the start.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

That film was made under the panic movement guidelines. The panic movement ('panic' because the Greek god Pan and well, panic) was a violent form of dadaism-surrealism founded by Francisco Arrabal, Jodorowsky and some French guy which supposedly tried to get the worst from us through shocking and apparently chaotic movies and performances to lead us to some systematic and scientifically calculated madness to free our mind of any rules or civilized principles, so we can reach true freedom or peace of mind or something like that.

Personally i think it all was about a bunch of intellectuals who found a way of attracting attention (well, art is basically that), but i will admit it takes a good amount of talent and "mala leche" to make such shocking movies and wild stuff.

Anyway, If you want to go to the source where these guys found his inspiration, look some early movies by Luis Buñuel. I would recommend L'Age d'Or or Un Chien Andalou:

 

[Kyriakos]

^The scenes with the Santa Sangre (particularly the death of the mother) are indeed far more shocking than the norm...
That said, the rest of the movie isn't (imo) particularly shocking. So that scene (and the general idea of the handless saint) sticks out.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

^The scenes with the Santa Sangre (particularly the death of the mother) are indeed far more shocking than the norm...

In other Jodorowsky's movies like the
Sacred Mountain or Fando and Lis there are scenes where real animals are killed in different ways or even burned alive which i find even more shocking because it is real. I bet If he could have replaced animals with humans he had done it.

 

[innonimatu]

So you finally found Jodorowsky? Though you had to have found him years ago it's the kind of think people like to bring up in idle talk about madmen and "art". More attention seeker than mad, he didn't made anything good, that I found at least. But It's funny to watch people's reactions to his movies. They do help fuill in the scenario of the 1970s peculiar forms of "intellectual" madness. Kind of historical documents. I can never shake the impression that it was one of those low points in history, too much desperation to change and reject and destroy

 

[Kyriakos]

So you finally found Jodorowsky? Though you had to have found him years ago it's the kind of think people like to bring up in idle talk about madmen and "art". More attention seeker than mad, he didn't made anything good, that I found at least. But It's funny to watch people's reactions to his movies. They do help fuill in the scenario of the 1970s peculiar forms of "intellectual" madness. Kind of historical documents. I can never shake the impression that it was one of those low points in history, too much desperation to change and reject and destroy

Well, I have only seen this one movie, yet if you watch the scene in question you may also agree that it isn't some generic shock scene one sees in exploitation films It was made with some artistic intelligence behind it.
Now I am not of the view that the entire Santa Sangre is a "good" film. But it doesn't really matter when even one or two scenes place it seemingly outside anything else one has seen