La danza de la realidad (2013) aka The Dance of Reality

If Jodorowsky has anything to show for twenty-three years away from the cinema, it is a maturity that was not present in his earlier films. Finally all of the elements click together. He has not abandoned his trademark surrealism, but reigned it in, and at last has made the film he was always meant to. The Dance of Reality is basically Jodorowsky's autobiography of his childhood growing up in Tocopilla, a working class city in northern Chile, a childhood dominated by his hardline Stalinist father, and well-endowed mother who delivers all her dialogue in song. On the surface, The Dance of Reality recalls similar works by Fellini (especially Amarcord), but there is a genuine emotional heart here that Fellini lost in the later half of his career. The visual extravagance serves a concrete purpose, and one feels that Jodorowsky really poured everything he had into this. Above all, this is his most honest and human film, all pretensions have been dropped for near-total honesty and sincerity. Jodorowsky's father is played by his son Brontis, who brings to the screen an electromagnetic energy, he dominates the film, looms over it, but he is not a caricature, and his tragic downfall, and eventual rebirth are detailed with a resounding emotional and psychological realism on the part of Brontis. Jeremias Herskovits, who plays Jodorowsky's younger self, is wide-eyed and full of curiosity, and his performance is one of the best I have seen recently by a child actor (in no way am I biased in saying this because he looks like myself when I was a young lad). Like in Terayama's Pastoral: To Die in the Country, Jodorowsky also inserts himself into the narrative, but thankfully does so wisely and sparingly. Aesthetically, this is a wondrous creation. Shot on location in Tocopilla, Jodorowsky meticulously recreated the city of his childhood with bright and colorful set pieces, shot with sweeping camerawork, and a sometimes joyous, sometimes serene soundtrack. But there is melancholy here, too. Ultimately, The Dance of Reality is about the longing for a past that will never return. It is also a story of love, familial love, love between man and animal, fraternal love, communal love. Very rarely will a film move me to tears, but The Dance of Reality succeeded in doing so. Cinema seeks the truth through lies, but what beautiful, and honest lies they are.