The Holy Mountain (1973) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by DirkH ★★★★★ 15

  So this is what happens when you turn the bible into a Rorschach test.

  Completely and utterly transcends the medium.

  Insanely beautiful and beautifully insane.

• Review by Hentai Cop 14

  The Holy Mountain is by far the most visually amazing film I have ever seen. Every shot of the movie is composed to absolute perfection; Jodorowsky pays attention to every detail of each scene and utilizes imagery better than most directors. As a director, Jodorowsky lets his dreams and feelings guide every aspect of his films, and by putting an unaltered snapshot of his imagination on-screen, he is able to create some of the most beautiful images in cinema.

  The most important part of The Holy Mountain is that the visuals aren't hollow, and serve a greater purpose than just being aesthetically pleasing. Jodorowsky uses the film medium to comment on the problems of modern consumerist society, and loads his…

• Review by Karsten ★★★★½ 4

  Finally got around to this thang.

  Really enjoyed it, specifically the ending. Really drove home a lot of interesting approaches to how society looks at desire and success. Few pretty pretentious spots here and there, but does that matter? Does anything even matter?
  
  
  Does this review even matter?

• Review by russman ★★★★ 2

  Ugh, another reminder that Pluto isn't officially a planet anymore

• Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★★ 35

  "You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold."

  If The Holy Mountain is still as dense and impenetrable after a second viewing, it is at least more comprehensible in simple structural terms. Here’s what I see as this nutty film's version of basic three act structure:

  Act 1: The Thief explores the world. This opening section starts with his (messy) birth and allows us to meet our protagonist and see what kind of a person he is (as a standard 1st act would). It also allows Jodorowsky to paint his vision of society, so this is where the bulk of his cultural/political critique comes in (images of fascism, theocracy, intolerance, etc.). This is where we see the need for…

• Review by liam f ★★★★½ 6

  and to think that George Harrison could have starred in this film if only he weren't so opposed to having his anus wiped on camera

• Review by Stacey B ★★★★½ 3

  me: *sees a bunch of lizards and toads dressed up in costumes* nice

  me: *sees lizards and toads get blown up* not nice

• Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 13

  90/100

  A gratuitous, nonsensical nightmare beamed from a faraway planet. It's as if a group of martians tried to convert it into a format that mere humans could understand, but then they stopped halfway through and said "fuck it" as they sent it to their human representative in the form of Alejandro Jodorowsky. The Holy Mountain begins with a surreal ceremony and ends with nothing; the evocation of a scrambling mind eventually giving up. Rainbows make up the entirety of caverns, shit becomes gold, and a baby rhino chills in a fountain. Bonkers, out-of-so-many-worlds cinema.

• Review by Simon Ramshaw ★★★★★ 4

  Things happen in this film.

• Review by Tony (tectactoe) ½ 76

  [1]

  Not the “worst” film I’ve ever seen, but surely one of the most thoroughly unenjoyable things I’ve endured, something going well beyond my usual, masochistic tendencies and approximating downright torture. (I was kept afloat solely because of its reputation, otherwise I’d have scrammed.) People talk about Tarr or Tarkovsky or Fellini as curators of pretentious art-house wankery - I’ve even done it myself in re Bergman and Godard - but none of them remotely approach the caliber of featherbrained self-gratification Jodoworsky achieves here. A tarot card fruit salad with decorative shock value - exploding toads! ritual castration! crucifixion molds! - whose obfuscation and weirdness are too ostensible and too strenuously hieroglyphic to register as anything other than purely perfunctory.…

• Review by Vincenzo ★★★★ 1

  Me: so wait what exactly is this movie about?
  Alejandro Jodorowsky: Yes.

• Review by Sethsreviews ★★★★ 11

  Please don't ask me to offer any form of in-depth analysis at this time because I have virtually none to offer. I feel like my brain has been put into a microwave for 2 hours, and the worst part is that I enjoyed it.