El Topo - Reception

Reception

The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 44th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

Phil Hardy, in his Encyclopedia of Western Movies (1985), wrote of El Topo: "Rather in the manner of Federico Fellini, whose self-conscious conflation of the roles of charlatan and ringmaster of the unconscious Jodorowsky apes, the film is a breathtaking concoction of often striking, but more often ludicrous, images. The result is a movie that, though it impressed many at the time of its original release, in retrospect is clearly a minor, albeit often very funny work."

Some critics, including Gary Arnold of The Washington Post and Times-Herald were offended by the film's visuals. Arnold wrote of the film: "There's not enough art to justify the sickening reality of Jodorowsky's artistic method. The meaning of the film is not to be found in the mystical camouflage of the gunfighter-turned-guru-and-martyr (for what, one wonders? Evidently self-agrandizement rather than the well-being of his congregation of the deformed), but in the picturesque horrors and humiliations."

The visuals were the main point of contention amongst El Topo' critics, who debated if the sequences and montage were meaningful or merely exploitative. Concerning the symbolism within the film, Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote: "they're all there, in a movie that is all guts (quite literally) but that has no body to give the guts particular shape or function." Canby found the film to be a con. Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune commented on how the visuals were perceived within the framework of drug culture. Siskel's review states: "Under the influence, 'El Topo' becomes a violent, would-be erotic freak show, and that, I suppose can be very heavy. For others, it is enough to make one yawn."

Other critics, however, remain more enthusiastic about the film. For example, Roger Ebert includes El Topo in his Great Movies series.

Peter Schjeldahl, writing for the New York Times, described the film as "a very strange masterpiece." His review states: "On first blush it might seem no more than a violent surreal fantasy, a work of fabulous but probably deranged imagination. Surreal and crazy it may be, but it is also- one realizes the second time through- as fully considered and ordered as fine clockwork."

The out of print El Topo: A Book of the Film contains a lengthy interview with a director that attempts to explain some of the film's visuals. It also contains the screenplay of the film. Both appear on the Subterranean Cinema blog.