The Screengrab : the holy mountain

Take Five: Gotta Get A Guru

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:55:00 GMT

Mike Myers' not-so-glorious return to the big screen, The Love Guru -- also known as Austin Powers IV and Verne Troyer's Pleading E-Mails Finally Pay Off -- opens everywhere today, and critics couldn't be more disappointed. Not only is it reported to be low on laughs, it's also being criticized as being high on stereotypes; despite his alleged friend and idol Deepak Chopra coming to his aid, Myers has been attacked for his stereotyping of Asian Indians and his portrayal of a cartoonish, caricatured guru. But let's face it: Hollywood has always loved its gurus, spiritual masters, and wise old mystics from the subcontinent. Hardly had the Beatles falled under the influence of the Maharishi than Hollywood followed suit; here's a look at some of the more memorable wise men of the East that the movie business has given us.

THE LOVED ONE (1965)

One of the few countercultural satires from the 1960s to hold up in the modern era, Tony Richardson's The Loved One holds up for two reasons: first, it was based on an Evelyn Waugh novel from nearly two decades prior and isn't quite as tarred, as a result, by the hippie-dippie vibe of its time; and second, it's got an impeccable crew behind the camera, from Richardson to cinematographer Haskell Wexler to skilled, hip screenwriters Christopher Isherwood and Terry Southern. This satire of capitalism run amok in the funereal industry crams so many jokes into its two-hour running time that it's almost impossible to keep up with them all, but make sure you don't miss gravel-throated character actor Lionel Stander as the Guru Brahmin, one of the first-ever big-screen gurus -- and one of the first to be portrayed as a bumbling fraud.

CANDY (1968)

This big-screen adaptation of the Mason Hoffenberg novel (actually the infamous Terry Southern writing under a pseudonym) is generally regarded as a major failure. It's not that there weren't talented people involved -- besides Southern himself, and his co-writer Buck Henry, the cast is crammed with fine actors -- but the entire film seems to go off the rails from the very start. That doesn't mean, though, that there aren't plenty of bizarre treats for those with the energy to sit through it. This updating of Voltaire's Candide is purely Southern in the sense that authority figures are always portrayed as phony, venal, and couching some grotesque habits or appetites. In this instance, we're treated to the the sight of the monstrour Grindl -- a sex-crazed Hindu guru played by an overheated Marlon Brando -- putting the poor, put-upon Candy in yet another compromising position.

THE PARTY (1968)

All right, so technically, Peter Sellers' Hrundi V. Bakshi ("That is what my name is called") in the Blake Edwards farce The Party isn't a guru. (That title more rightly belongs to Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Sellers in 1979's Being There.) But he is Indian, sort of, and he does speak in Hindi platitudes that those around him mistake for pearls of inscrutable eastern wisdom. For example, when asked who he thinks he is, he responds, "In India, we do not think who we are. We know who we are." Whoa, heavy. The rest of the movie is pretty much straight-up Blake Edwards comic fare, and it falls flat on the stereotypes at times, but a few scenes are still paralytically funny forty years later, especially when a stoned Bakshi comes across a parakeet cage and solemnly intones the name of the birdseed: "Birdy Num Num."

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973)

In this stunning, surreal, and nearly incomprehensible masterpiece by ultimate provocatuer Alejandro Jodorowsky, the guru is Horacio Salinas, a Christlike thief who is half savior and half mountebank. Under the tutelage of the Alchemist, a mysterious figure played by Jodorowsky himself, he and his gang of mystical banditos -- each named for a different celestial body -- plan nothing less than an assault on Heaven, where they will depose the reigning gods and take their places. Visually, this is exactly the sort of film people talk about when they talk about crazy European art films: it's bewildering, deliberately offensive, totally impenetrable, and weird for the sake of being weird. It's also absolutely brilliant, and Jodorowsky -- who's the real guru here -- shows us what it might be like inside the mind of the truly enlightened -- and it alternately makes us gasp at its beauty and scares the hell out of us.

HOLY SMOKE (1999)

Jane Campion's weirdest movie -- which, if you think about it, is really saying something -- features the always-engaging Kate Winslet in the role of a young woman who decides to embark on a quest for spiritual self-discovery in the Indian subcontinent. Along the way, she encounters the guru Chiddaatman Baba (played by Dhritiman Chatterjee) and falls under his sway -- and that's just where the movie begins. From there, she is confronted by Harvey Keitel as a deprogrammer -- sorry, "cult exiter" -- hired by her family to get her back, and discovers that he's not without his own guru-like tendencies. A battle of wills, intellects and bodies ensue over the terrain of feminism, spirituality and sexuality, and the movie degenerates into a bit of a chaotic mess, but it's at least a glorious mess with two terrific actors like Keitel and Winslet at the fore.

Famous Last Words, Round 1 Tiebreaker: Yeesh.

Paul Clark — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

You know, this is all getting a bit silly. I try to post some tiebreaker quotes to help decide the winners, and what happens but all of the contenders rise to the occasion. I'm glad to see we've got some astute players out there, but I fear I'll run out of good quotes before long. At the very least, I've got some research ahead of me to come up with some more. Anyway, let's run down last week's quotes:

1. "You with your visions and your dreams." ~ I'm not even going to say what this is, except to tell you that it's something I'm guessing all of you have seen and may very well even own in some format or other. Look it up yourself.

2. "You’re the only guy I know who would borrow money to repay a debt that you took to repay a debt."
"And that’s why you love me." "That’s why I love you." ~ This on the other hand is something I'd guess most of you haven't seen, despite my ongoing efforts to remedy that. It's from Richard Shepard's The Hunting Party.

3. "Real life awaits us." ~ This, of course, is the final line of Alejandro's sublimely ridiculous classic, The Holy Mountain.

And now, here are this week's tiebreaker quotes. If these don't do the trick, it might be back to the drawing board for the tiebreaker process:

1. "It's the tin lids... when- how- will the world ever..."
"End?"
"Yes."

2. "Jones is my name. I'm in insurance."

3. "Will there be a last letter?"

As always, submissions are due no later than next Wednesday at 11:59 PM Eastern. Remember, submit all guesses to famouslastwords@nerve.com. Good luck!

The Movie Moment: The Holy Mountain (1973, Alejandro Jodorowsky)

Paul Clark — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

People have many reasons to watch movies. For many, the reasons can be fairly basic: to laugh, to cry, to be scared, to get turned on, and to make their pulses quicken, all within a safe and socially-acceptable environment. Some viewers want to be spurred to thought, others to action. But for those who truly care about cinema, there are few moviegoing pleasures more profound than to discover images that are unique and unforgettable. Such images are the stock in trade of director Alejandro Jodorowsky.

The early seventies were a time of spiritual exploration, when many people attempted to broaden their minds through drugs, sexual experimentation, Eastern mysticism, and art. In this respect, Jodorowsky was a quintessential filmmaker of the period, not only because he dealt with all of these things, but also because he was a seeker himself. A true renaissance man, Jodorowsky has worked as a director, a composer, a philosopher, a novelist, a religious scholar, a mime, a comic book writer, and a psychotherapist. Like fellow director and seeker Werner Herzog, Jodorwsky is forever in search of new worlds to explore. But unlike Herzog, whose films have taken him all over the world, Jodorowsky’s worlds reside primarily within the mind.

The most vivid cinematic distillation of Jodorowsky’s gifts obsessions is his 1973 film The Holy Mountain. The film tells the story of an alchemist (played by Jodorowsky himself) who leads nine disciples on a spiritual journey to the legendary Holy Mountain of Lotus Island in a quest for immortality. But even if you’re not down with Jodorowsky’s spirituality, it’s still easy to appreciate the film from a purely visual standpoint, as The Holy Mountain contains some of the most wonderful and horrifying sights I’ve ever seen in a movie. A shot of Christ-like figure wailing in agony as he’s surrounded by a warehouse full of hundreds of papier-mâché Christs molded in his image. A man, shot dead, with tiny birds flying out of the bullet hole. A traveling toad and chameleon circus re-enacts the landing of the Spanish in Mexico- a creation so bizarre that I wouldn’t be surprised if Jodorowsky took it from real life.

Most magical of all is a flashback scene involving one of the disciples. In this scene, an artist called Klen takes his mistress and chauffeur to see his most treasured creation, a “love machine.” The machine is a large robotic cube with a mechanical vagina on one side, designed to be stimulated with a long metal cylinder. After the chauffeur’s half-hearted attempts fail to stimulate the machine (“frigid!” he complains), Klen’s mistress’ stimulation is far more successful. The box expands, it sways back and forth, and arm-like appendages extend from within the machine. Finally, a white goo spills from the cylinder, and shortly thereafter the machine produces a smaller machine that makes crying and cooing sounds.

Reading the above paragraph, I realize that words probably fail to do the scene justice, but if you haven’t seen the film, rest assured that it’s one of the funniest pure sight gags I’ve ever seen. Yet there’s more on Jodorowsky’s mind here than comedy. The love machine is certainly impressive, but it’s also pretty pointless. As such, the scene indicative of the sometimes counterproductive ways that people can channel their creative instincts. Yes, Klen can build a functioning “love machine” on which people can simulate stimulation, but to what end? Little wonder that, like all of the film’s seekers, Klen ends up turning his back on his life and his creations to search for spiritual fulfillment with the Alchemist, atop the Holy Mountain.