Endless Poetry

Dir: Alejandro Jodorowsky

2016

*****

It's typical isn't it, you wait twenty-three years for a Alejandro Jodorowsky film and then two come along at once. This is not a complaint. Only having to wait a short three years (which isn't bad for a crowdfunded film but it highlights just how loved and appreciated his work is globally) was a relief, the fact that it is just as good as its predecessor, which is one of the great masterpieces of the 21st Century, is outstanding. Following on from The Dance of Reality, a film that explores Jodorowsky's childhood and belief that reality is not objective but rather a dance created by our imaginations, or as he puts it; "The story of my life is a constant effort to expand the imagination and its limitations, to capture its therapeutic and transformative potential. An active imagination is the key to such a wide vision: it looks at life from angles that are not our own, imagining other levels of consciousness superior to our own". The film was a strong mix of theatrical metaphor and operatic mythology that did feel like a dance of sorts. Endless Poetry carries on from where the first film finished and sees Jodorowsky blossom in his journey of self-discovery. The Dance of Reality was more about his relationships with his other family members, where Endless Poetry concentrates more on his own developmental voyage of discovery. In adolescence Jodorowsky realized that he wanted to become a poet, so the film is a visual poem that explores his metamorphosis from child in the shadows to adult in the limelight. Where his childhood was a circus of others, his adulthood becomes a circus of his own creation, the addition of clowns, dwarfs and amputees (circus freaks if you will) are typical in his films but only now make real sense. I wondered if his film making would come into play at any point, it is apparently to follow in the next chapter but Endless Poetry made me realize that actually, Jodorowsky is a poet first and a filmmaker second in many respects. He just films his poems rather than writes them. Once again, his two sons, Brontis and Adan, play his father and him respectively while his grandson plays a younger version of himself, while he again pops up randomly to challenge his younger self in person. It sounds way more confusing than it really is. It's quite a remarkable thing to see a whole family help their matriarch explore his own life in something that is clearly having therapeutic effect. It's amazing that this level of creativity is coming from a man in his late eighties. One of the last scenes sees Jodorowsky tell his younger self to embrace his father, as it was the last time he ever saw him. He tells him to know him, to understand that their relationship with each other, tough as it was, moulded him into the man he is today. The beauty of watching an elderly man, sharing this level of raw honesty with his two sons, who are talking about their own grandfather, brought me to tears. It's one of the most profound moments of cinema I have ever witnessed. The film is full of important lessons, personal but honest ponderings on life that everyone can understand, among the dizzying and rather surreal imagery. Jodorowsky also raises the importance of Chilean culture and Hispanic literature by revisiting his early friendships with some of the 20th century's creative giants such as Enrique Lihn, Stella Díaz Varín, Nicanor Parra and what they all achieved in the 1940s. Not all the metaphors are clear and the great director indulges himself once more but then it is his life and his film, for once a pet hate became the complete opposite for me, again, to see such life in an 88 year old man is a wonderful thing to behold. It's a stunning film, completely unconventional, almost to the point whereby calling it a masterpiece doesn't do it enough justice.