Santa Sangre (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989)

 I could perfectly begin the review with a line like, "this is weird!" But the thing is that this is the beauty of the project, that it is weird. Weird and oddball are qualities that we endorse in a movie. In a word filled with square people being weird is an act of rebellion and a very healthy rebellion I must add. Surrealistic, art psychological horror movie by Jodorowsky is something to fully admire. I have seen the film twice in my life and still I'm missing things. The movie is so complex, nightmarish and eccentric that it makes you want to return to it just for feeling once more its chilling aura. The first time that I watched the movie I was fully into arthouse movies. And although this is definitely an arthouse film, is also something more than simply that. There is that totally artistic quality running through the movie. The eccentricity of the circus people combined with the dread and the trauma of the main character give to the audience a flavor that is so hard to be put into plain words. It's like you constantly watching someone else's nightmare that film. It's like you have swallowed the most hallucinatory drug that exists on this planet. 

I have often spoken about how important is for me the uniqueness and authenticity of a project. I'm not interested how will you say it, just be innovative. That's the greatest quality an artistic piece can have. And Santa Sangre has without second thoughts such a distinguishable voice, image and tone. It's this mixture of beauty and terror that make this movie such an emotional trip. A trip that many people would most certainly deny due to its weirdness. Because most people are not interested to test and experiment with themselves. They prefer to watch something that will put them to a straight lethargy. They prefer to see something that doesn't excite them at all, than take the ticket and go to a plain that journeys to unexplored lands. Santa Sangre is definitely one of the movies that pushed the boundaries of what is and can be a movie. What emotions can come to the viewer through the film. How the image can interact with a story and give birth to a new thing that has its own agenda. Santa Sangre is one of the most important surrealistic pieces of cinema that we have seen and one of the most trippy movies ever made.