The Holy Mountain (1973)

The story of a man (who looks like Jesus Christ, or a cast member of Hair) who wanders through some disturbing scenarios of surreal human suffering before running into a wiseman-type to leads him to a monolith that he must scale and enter to meet “the Planets” who are other folks who are all going to go with him to scale the Holy Mountain and become Gods (perhaps fighting and defeating the Gods already there?) Also, each Planet tells their backstory, a kind of mini-episode to explain themself. Lots of the film takes place in these backstories (some are much better than other).

Everything that happens of course, is not the point at all. The imagery is what counts, the bizarre, the surreal, at times shocking and mostly dazzling. Each scene has something amazing to offer your eyeballs. Much is odd for the sake of oddness, but it is not empty. There is something there.

David Lynch, Mathew Barney, Wes Anderson, MGMT, the guy that directed Begotten, Marilyn Manson and countless others were obviously taking notes. Recommended for lovers of weird confrontational shit, however:  if you do not like “art films” you will hate hate hate this.

the depth and breadth of this films influence cannot be overemphasized.