In this review from the archives, Sadhbh Ní Bhroin looks at Endless Poetry.
Succeeding 2013’s La danza de la realidad (Dance of Reality), and presented as the second work in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s biographical film series, Poesía sin fin (Endless Poetry) is a mesmerisingly colourful coming of age which delights, entertains, and honours a serious debt to the artistic and socio-political movement of surrealism.
Following the exhilarating adolescence of Jodorowsky (played here by his son, Adan Jodorowsky), Poesía sin findocuments a journey, a transformation from young dreamer to fully fledged artist, the action unfolding as a dreamlike fairy tale which keeps closely in line with the director’s dedicatedly surrealist roots. The audience travels through the bohemian streets of Santiago de Chile, hot on Jodorowsky’s heels as he leaves his parents’ home, searches for a muse and the freedom to create, forges a family of his own, and, confidently established as a poet, embarks for Paris to “save surrealism”.
Visually there is a wealth of inspiration taken from the fantastic nature of surrealist art and of genre cinema. Jodorowsky uses surrealism in both its imagistic and its reflationary forms, holding the movement as a template for his personal development as a poet, and placing its socio-political nature as a factor in his decision to move away from Chile following the electoral victory of Ibáñez del Campo. His artistic interpretation of his parents fuses surrealism and genre, and is comically touching. His mother Sara (Pamela Flores) does not speak, and communicates solely through operatic singing. This, paired with the stage-like sets used throughout the film, relates maternal presence to the musical genre. His father Jaime (played by Jodorowsky’s other son, Brontis Jodorowsky) is shown as a man fixed in tradition, a factor which both Jodorowsky and the surrealist movement rebelled against, and is the harsh force stifling his son’s creative spirit. One scene shows the young boy engaged in an imagined fight with his father, with the father’s head appearing larger than life on the table in a fashion highly reminiscent of the camera tricks of Georges Méliès, an early pioneer of cinema whose works of fantasy would continue to inspire up to the inception of the surrealist movement.
Throughout there are subtle nods to art and artists; Jodorowsky’s muse Stella is a wonderfully over the top pastiche of the manic pixie dream girl trope, and her fragmentally colourful appearance is reminiscent of Picasso’s paintings of women. During an early conversation with Stella, Jodorowsky indicates he would cut his ear off if she asked him to, a move which is arguably a reference to Van Gogh’s own self-mutilation. Separate scenes involving passionate kissing and a piano are impossible to watch without being reminded of the work of Luis Buñuel. In this sense the film becomes not just about Jodorowsky celebrating his own life, but about the director celebrating art and creativity itself.
Jodorowsky’s troubled relationship with his father is an underlying thread throughout the film, with his coming of age directly linked to saying goodbye to Jamie. The pair clash consistently in their short time together, with a frustrated Jamie pushing his son towards a medical profession and squashing his poetic endeavours, out of fear of his son becoming queer. A young Jodorowsky’s own joyous reaction upon confirming his heterosexuality is laid on quite thickly as a result, and his zealous celebration of straightness is slightly alienating to queer viewers. Jodorowsky’s final decision to leave is tinged with regretful hindsight as he fights with and abandons his father on the dock, an older Jodorowsky (played by the director himself) watching on in vain, wishing things between them had ended differently. “I’m not a child anymore”, Jodorowsky finally says, to which his father sadly agrees, saying “no need for a nest once the eagles have grown.”
Though slightly meandering at times, Poesía sin fin is a dreamy, colourful exploration of the growth of a creative soul which gains its richness from artistic expression, and, using surrealism’s visual symbolism, creates a visual poetry of its own.
Endless Poetry (Poesía sin fin) is available to stream online now.
