The Holy Mountain

Film poster

The Holy Mountain is a 1973 movie by Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky. Despite lackluster box office returns upon release, the film is now regarded as a long-lost cult classic that was revolutionary in its blend of surrealist imagery, creative cinematography, esoteric mysticism, unorthodox philosophy and social commentary. Plot wise, the film is structured into three informal acts: the first follows "the Thief" as he wanders aimlessly through a surreal and confusing society, the second follows an alchemist as he seeks to assemble a group of the most powerful people, and the third act sees the alchemist's cult seek out the titular holy mountain in a quest for immortality and enlightenment. 

Plot structure aside, the film comments on a very wide area of themes in society and religion, so this will narrow in on some more specific elements that are more relevant to ideological and sociological analysis. For example, one interesting part of the film is its commentary on contemporary capitalism and its method of production and reproduction of objects. 

One example of this is a scene in which the character of the Thief is tricked into drinking tequila until he blacks out so a shopkeeper can use his body as a mold for life-sized statues of Christ. This sounds like an extremely bizarre scene in a movie (it is), but it serves to underscore the universality of commodification under contemporary, industrial capitalism. Literally nothing is sacred, instead everything is reduced to an endlessly replicated and duplicated product. These images of Christ become, as Baudrillard put it, mere simulacra: images disjointed and removed from their original sources. Adrift without his own identity, the Thief wanders throughout a society of images and spectacles, but in doing so, is taken and repurposed for the further reproduction of this spectacle. 

This theme of replication and repetition is continued as the Alchemist tries to gather a group of the world's "greatest thieves." Many of these men and women exist to subvert the "authentic" experiences of reality and human social life in order to profit and control the masses. The ideological function of these scenes is twofold. On one hand, it sets up society as a layering and hierarchy of ideologies where, on one hand, the upper echelon of society constructs the ideological groupings for the lower classes, while simultaneously they are operating under their own ideological praxis. As the quest for enlightenment continues, the group breaks through certain ideological layers while only coming to realize that ideologies continue to structure their existence. Although they are led by the Alchemist and look to him for guidance, the Thief eventually realizes to accept some basic ideological aspects. Without ideology, there are only two options: the constant, futile search for an absolute truth or a regressing into nihilistic hedonism, embodied in the pantheon bar, a place of fakes and frauds that failed to climb the holy mountain. 

On the other hand, the group also posits ideology as a fundamentally human process, especially as being something that is wholly mediated as a social relation. Purging ideological "demons" through physical discipline and meditation, the group is therefore fundamentally rebelling against the society that they created. As the most powerful people in society, they are reaping what they have sown. They have created an immaterial world by their own over-materialism and have alienated themselves from the entire productive process by creating imitations instead of authentic productions. 

Interestingly, the solution taken is not the typically ideological one; instead of switching to a better product to produce, they reject the framing entirely, choosing to instead lead a hermetic existence in a quest for immortality. 

Various movies (catching up after a hiatus)

This blog post will be different from some of the pervious. Instead of focusing on a single film, I will focus on a single facet of ideology from various perspectives and examine how it can be seen in the thematic elements of various movies.

For example, a commonly reoccurring trope in cinema is the idea of the sub-reality, or the world beneath the surface of our perception. Either fantastical or mundane, the alternate world is important because its discovery or acceptance recognizes an alternative facet of reality that structures and maintains our perception of normalcy. Interacting with this world, therefore bridges the gap between the subject and ideology.

One interesting example of this is Coppala's The Godfather (1972). The mob's patriarch, Vito, tries to create some outward illusion of normalcy to his son Michael instead of having him involved in criminal activity. For Vito to be happy, he needs his son to be ignorant of what's going on in order to preserve his innocence and protect him from rival families or the police. However, Michael is not stupid and he is very much aware of what's going on, yet he puts on the outward appearance of ignorance in order to appease his family. As the viewer continues to watch the characters develop, it becomes clear that the illusion of Michael's ignorance is a shared social illusion in which everyone knows that Michael knows about the mob, yet also outwardly "knows" that he knows nothing. Michael himself projects this dual identity, as he proves a competent leader when he needs to take control of the operations, yet prior he was seen by everyone (including himself) as the "kid" without any real exposure to the criminal world.

The example set by the Corleones in The Godfather shows how ideology itself is constructed, often willingly and knowingly, by social groups in order to fulfill latent desires and create an outward appearance of harmony or certainty. Of course, this ideological structure is prone to collapse with the intrusion of outside forces that make everyone question the solidity of their own identity, which itself is another commonly repeated theme in film.

An example of this can be found in Big Trouble in Little China (1986), a film by John Carpenter that has some thematic parallels with his later film They Live (1988). The outsider and loner, much like in They Live, is partially removed from the standard ideological structures of the world in which he enters, so his very presence ends up being disruptive and collapsing the substructures that exist underneath the surface of ordinary society. In both films, there is a deeper truth to be discovered that forces the protagonist to question his own ideological lens through which he views the world. In the case of Big Trouble in Little China, the truth is revealed that ancient Chinese legends are real and that monsters and magic are all around us, yet hidden by our own ideological preconceptions. While in many ways less radical than They Live, Big Trouble in Little China manages to address similar notes about how ideology works and functions in society.


One thing to keep in mind is that ideology is not necessarily a force or some sort of shaping entity, but is something that interacts dialectically with that which it influences. The subject is not some wholly disempowered, brainwashed zombie that is incapable of seeing outside ideology. In Birdman (2014), we see the power of the subconscious to create broad webs of ideology, but also the power of the ego to overcome and see through these webs. Although there are many more details of the movie that will be overlooked in this analysis, it is clear that the moments in which the protagonist struggles with his past "alter-ego" of Birdman, he is forced to confront his own fears and insecurities, as well as struggle with his own libidinal desires for power and control over himself, even though he has none.

The struggle for control over oneself (against what? One's subconscious? Is the subconscious an external force or a culmination of repressed desires?) brings up an interesting dilemma about the nature of ideology. Is the goal to create an authentic, positive and life-affirming ideology to structure our reality? Or is it necessary to reject ideology for an anarchic, chaotic web of signs without any preconception of unity between them? We see this struggle in Birdman as the protagonist struggles both with problems of the film's internal logical structures and the influences from outside (the "real" world), which often informs his perspective more than things even within the contained ideological ecology of his own world. This dialectical structure points to ideology as being a mediator, much like a Platonic demiurge, and although this is in interesting perspective, I am unsure about its universality as a concept. Regardless, the dialog is interesting in of itself and is something that more movies should explore.