| Santa Sangre | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Alejandro Jodorowsky |
| Produced by | Claudio Argento |
| Written by | Alejandro Jodorowsky Roberto Leoni Claudio Argento |
| Starring | Axel Jodorowsky Blanca Guerra Sabrina Dennison Adan Jodorowsky Guy Stockwell Thelma Tixou Faviola Tapia |
| Music by | Simon Boswell |
| Cinematography | Daniele Nannuzzi |
| Editing by | Mauro Bonanni |
| Release date(s) | 1989 |
| Running time | 123 minutes |
| Country | Italy Mexico |
| Language | English |
Santa Sangre ("Holy Blood") is a 1989 Mexican-Italian surrealist film directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky and written by Jodorowsky along with Claudio Argento and Roberto Leoni.[1] Divided into both a flashback and a flashforward, the film, which is set in Mexico, tells the story of Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky), a boy who grew up in a circus, and his life through both adolescence and early adulthood. Whilst still a child, he witnesses his mother Concha (Blanca Guerra), who is devoted to an armless saint, have her own arms cut off by her enraged husband, and being so shocked by this, he is subsequently institutionalised in a mental sanitorium. Eventually leaving the facility as a man, he becomes his mother's servant, literally acting as her arms, and is forced to commit the murders that she commands.
It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival,[2] and generally was critically well received, eventually being ranked 476th on Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.[3] Like many of Jodorowsky's films, it has since become a cult film. In the United States, it was originally rated NC-17 for "several scenes of extremely explicit violence". However, an edited version was released with an R rating for "bizarre, graphic violence and sensuality, and for drug content."
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The film tells the story of a man named Fenix (Spanish for phoenix). It starts with a Jesus-like naked figure sitting in a tree in what looks like a mental asylum. Nurses come out to him, bringing a plate of conventional food and also one of a raw fish. As they try to coax him off of his perch, it is the fish that persuades him to come down. As the nurses get him to put on some overalls the viewer sees that he has a tattoo of phoenix on his chest.
The movie flashes back into Fenix's childhood, which he spent performing as a "child magician" in a circus run by his father Orgo the knife-thrower and his mother Concha, a trapeze artist and aerialist. The circus crew also includes, among others, a woman whose body is covered in tattoos and who acts as the object of Orgo's knife-throwing feats ("The Tattooed Woman"), her adopted daughter Alma (a hearing-impaired, voiceless mime and tightrope walker whom Fenix fancies), Fenix's midget friend Aladin, a pack of clowns, and a small elephant. Orgo carries on a very public flirtation with the Tattooed Woman, and their knife-throwing act is heavily sexualized.
Concha is also the leader of a religious cult that considers as its patron saint a little girl who was raped and had her arms cut off by two brothers. At the time of the flashback, their church is about to be bulldozed at the behest of the owner of the land on which it is located, and the followers make one last stand against the police and the bulldozers. A Roman Catholic monsignor drives into the conflict, saying that he will prevent its demolition. But after he enters the temple to inspect it, he deems it blasphemous and unworthy (the girl worshiped is no saint, he says, and the supposed pool of "holy blood" at the center of the edifice, in which ritual immersions take place, contains really only red paint), so the demolition is carried out. Fenix leads Concha back to the circus, where she finds out about Orgo's affair, but Orgo, being also a hypnotist, mesmerizes Concha to do his bidding and has sex with her as well.
The circus elephant then dies, much to Fenix's grief, and a public funeral is conducted, in which the elephant is paraded through the city inside a giant casket. The casket is then tilted down into the city dump, where immediately scavengers open it and proceed to carve the elephant and take away the meat. Orgo consoles his son by tattooing a spread-eagled phoenix into Fenix's chest, identical to the one on his own chest, using only one of his knives dipped in ink. This tattoo, Orgo says, will make Fenix a man.
Later on, as Fenix performs with his mother on stage, Concha, who is suspended mid-air while hanging from her hair, sees Orgo and the Tattooed Woman sneak out of the tent. She chases after them, sees them sexually engaged, and deliberately pours a bottle of sulfuric acid onto Orgo's genitals, mutilating them. Orgo, in turn, sets her against a big bullseye and cuts off both her arms (much like the girl previously venerated). He then walks into the street and slits his throat. Fenix watches this, locked inside a trailer. He also sees the Tattooed Woman running away with Alma.
Back in the present, Fenix goes out to a field trip to a movie theater along with other patients, most of whom suffer from Down Syndrome. A pimp intercepts him and four others and persuades them to take cocaine and follow him to a large prostitute. On the way Fenix spots the Tattooed Woman, who is now a prostitute, and becomes filled with rage. The Tattooed Woman is also shown prostituting Alma, who manages to escape the house and runs away into the night. Back in the asylum, Fenix's armless mother Concha calls out for him from the street and he escapes by climbing down his cell window. The Tattooed Woman is then repeatedly stabbed and killed by a pair of womanly hands.
Mother and son go on to put an act where he stands behind her and inserts his arms in her sleeves so that she pretends to have arms again. Together they perform mimicry and piano-playing. But soon enough Fenix realizes that his mother can literally take full control of his arms to do her bidding. This does not only include performing day-to-day acts such as eating or knitting, but also killing those women whom she deems a threat to her son. He is forced to kill a young woman in the fashion his father Orgo used to knife-throw, as well as a cross-dressing wrestler, whom he slashes with a sword. It is revealed in a dream that he has killed many more women, all of whose memories haunt him.
Alma finds Fenix and together plan to run away from Concha and her house, now fashioned in a similar way to her demolished temple. She tries to force him to murder Alma as well, but after some struggle he manages to plunge a knife into Concha's stomach, apparently killing her. But she reveals to him that she will always be inside him, and vanishes. Through a series of flashbacks it is revealed that Concha actually died after being maimed by Orgo, and that Fenix has kept a mannequin in the fashion of his armless mother while performing both on stage and at home. He destroys the homemade temple and throws away the mannequin with the help of his hallucinated childhood friends, Aladin and the clowns.
The police are waiting outside the house and order both Fenix and Alma to put their hands up. Both comply, and Fenix watches his own with awe as he does so. He has regained control of them.
Santa Sangre has received predominantly positive reviews,[4] with a reviewer from the British Film 4 describing it as "One of Jodorowsky’s finest films" which "resonates with all the disturbing power of a clammy nightmare filtered through the hallucinatory lens of 1960s psychedelia."[5] The American film critic Roger Ebert was also positive of the film, believing that it carried the moral message of genuinely opposing evil rather than celebrating it, the latter of which he felt most of its contemporary horror films did. Ebert described it as "a horror film, one of the greatest, and after waiting patiently through countless Dead Teenager Movies, I am reminded by Alejandro Jodorowsky that true psychic horror is possible on the screen--horror, poetry, surrealism, psychological pain and wicked humor, all at once."[6] In recognition of its critical success, Santa Sangre ranks 476th on Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.[3] Other reviewers have however reacted negatively to the film, for instance Dennis Schwartz gave it a C+ and stated that it was "an acquired taste that's best suited for those with a strong stomach for bloodbaths and freaks."[7]
Santa Sangre went without a DVD release in the U.S. since its original premiere, only screening at a few theaters familiar with Jodorowky's previous work, but on January 25, 2011, Severin Film gave Santa Sangre a release on both DVD and Blu-ray with more than "five hours of exclusive extras." [8] A UK DVD from Anchor Bay was released in 2004.[9]
During the elephant death scene, a woman explains to young Fenix "The Elephant is Dying". This sound clip is used in the opening of the song "Whatzupwitu" by Eddie Murphy and Michael Jackson.
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