VividSimon Simply Perfect

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

jdelamater-01684 Santa Sangre is a 1989 Mexican surrealist psychological horror film directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. The film stars Jodorowsky's sons Aden and Axel Jodorowsky who play young Fenix and adult Fenix. Young Fenix is a boy with aspirations of becoming a magician living in a Circus with his Circus performer parents. Adult Fenix is a magician living in a psychiatric ward in Mexico City. Fenix and his mother Concha are very close. When Fenix's mother's arms are chopped off early in his life, he breaks down mentally and is sent to a psychiatric ward. Until one day he escapes and is reunited with his dead mother. He then helps her live out her life with the help of his arms. This leads the two to become dangerously codependent on each other. In this film analysis, I will explain how sex, violence, and the fear of growing up is shown symbolically as well as literally throughout the film.When we are children, we think about the freedoms of adulthood. But what we fail to realize is what those freedoms bring. Adulthood remains an even harder task when not properly transitioned. With Fenix's role as a magician, he plays out the ultimate transformation of death into life. He acts this out because he is constantly being haunted by the past. What was dead before, comes to life before his eyes. We see this through his mother as well as the many scenes in the graveyard. Fenix's tragic life begins when he catches his mother and father having sex. His mother's pleasure contrasts with the elephant's pain. The elephant symbolizes Fenix's innocence and childhood, which dies when he learns of his father's affair with the tattooed woman. This is shown later in the film when we see a naked and older Fenix hunkered down spewing blood out of his nose. The tattooed woman is the ultimate representation of sex and desires that Fenix's young mind is scarred by. The hesitance to grow up is first shown when we see young Fenix crying and holding his mother's waist as her building is about to be destroyed on top of her. Concha nurtures him when he needs her because she is the maternal figure. But his father takes a more masculine approach to his son's behavior. He wants his son to be more like him so he tattoos an eagle onto his chest. This can be seen as a sort of forced acceptance from his father as well as what his father believes to be the right of manhood. His father leaves more than just a literal mark on Fenix. When Fenix is met with a woman he desires later in life, he dresses up like his father and throws knives at the woman. He does this not only because this is what he knows to be a sign of affection towards someone desirable. But also because sex and violence have become connected through his traumatizing childhood. Fenix's fear of sex is learned very early. Not only through the elephant. But through his mother's reaction to sexual acts. When Fenix is young, he may not be mature enough to realize his father is having an affair. But what he does understand is that his mother's reactions to the tattooed woman's and his father's sexual interactions is wrong. This leads him to believe that all sexual acts can be seen as wrong. We see this when a snake is coming out of his pants uncontrollably when he invites a harmless woman to his home. When Fenix sees the tattooed woman when he is an adult, his repressed childhood comes rushing back into the foreground of his mind. This leads him to escape the mental health facility and regress back to his childhood. This regression to childhood brings his mother back. This leads Fenix to living out his mother's desires so that he doesn't have to take responsibility for his own life. What his mother represents at this point is his guilty conscience. She punishes him for his mistakes and shames him for his inabilities. This leads to Fenix's desire to become The Invisible Man. The Invisible Man represents Fenix's desire to disappear or not exist. After Fenix lets his mother go, he is then forced to take responsibility for his own actions as an adult in a dangerous world.Santa Sangre is indeed a surrealistic horror film and it certainly succeeds at that. But at it's heart, it is a story about growing up and the fears that can bring. I think that's why Jodorowsky chose his sons to play the role of Fenix. A lot of the success of the film depended on how far they were willing to go with the characters and I think he felt he could get that across to them more than a normal actor. With this film, Jodorowsky creates a coming of age film like no one has ever seen on film. A truly miraculous feat in many regards.

majiin4 Woahou ... What a masterpiece ! I've bought Jodorowsky's movies without knowing what's going to happen, result : I've gain so much maturity by watching all of them, and Santa Sangre is definitively with The Holy Mountain the duo that clearly change my way of enjoying REAL art. This is just pure madness, surrealism at it best. Stunning soundtrack mixed with circus fantasy, an absolute mind trip to Jodorowsky dimension. Everything is beautiful in this movie, everything is well linked, all actors play fantastically, there's no mistake. I'm really happy that this kind of movie isn't "mainstream" like other sci-fi sh*t massively sponsoring by media and "people". I just wish to see more like them, and it's a hard job finding them because of their rareness. The only regret, as an audiophile, is that few tracks on the movie are unfortunately NOT present on the Original Soundtrack released on vinyl and CD, result > horrible DVDRIP MP3 audio for a frightening sound in the graveyard part (and also from the DVD menu) . Anyway, I just stand up like I did at the end of the movie, clap my hand loudly and say proudly with a tear drop : BRAVO - BRAVO !!!!!!!

hellraiser7 Alejandro Jodorosky is one of my favorite movie directors, his films are the kind you don't see every day and still don't. He really breaks conventions and pushes the boundaries all to give us not just great visual but substance backed by great intelligence to make it more of an experience; this either makes him a genius or half insane, or probably a combo of both due to what I see.Believe it or not out of his films this one is my favorite one from him and it's one of my favorite films in general. Because this film has the most emotion and a character to feel pathos for.It's hard to really talk about this film because it's one of those one's you have to see to believe and would take more than one watch to uncover more, plus I don't want to give too much away. The production value is great, this was done on a low or modest budget but it was used well and right, the effort really shows. From the use of the location but mainly of all of the set pieces. The music is also really great, some of it is fun mainly that music from the beginning but others express a degree of emotion.But most importantly I really love the visuals and the story that accompanies it. The film in a very weird sense is sort of a story about rising to freedom, I really like how the Greek myth of the Phenix is incorporated into the film. From the fact the main character Fenix has a tattoo of the Phoenix on his chest and his name ironically.This is a character you can't help but feel constant pathos for as he has been tormented by both the past, but his fanatical mom whom somehow psychically controls him. It sort of reflects our subconscious fear of either growing up to be just like our parents, or their ideals and desires interfering with our own. Indeed we see that, from scenes whenever she talks Fenix acts as her hands which I'll admit is impressive the way he moves them to act in sync with her feelings, which isn't an easy feat. This makes it all the more tragic because it shows he has no will of her own, even when she gives an order we know he shouldn't obey but he has no choice.Fenix's mom Bianca is no doubt a monster whom I feel is a villain you just plain hate. She has heavy believe in purity but she is the ultimate hypocrite as she is not pure herself. She is no doubt sexist as she doesn't have a high opinion of men but nor of women as most or all in her mind are impure which is why she believes her son should have no one in his life. Which is why you can say she is unable to fly again, without love you can never really soar to heights.Just like in the myth the Phenix doesn't rise until it is destroyed first and Fenix's life sadly is no bed of roses, as he is tormented internally and externally from the forces from the past and the forces in the present.The world in this film as usual with most of Jodorosky's films is truly a live surreal world where it's dark, strange, dreamlike but all the same fascinating, just about anything can happen here and does. There is always so much going on in the background almost as much as in a "Where's Waldo" art illustration it might take more than one watch to see it all. Let alone there are some constant symbols and overtones, some on sexuality and innocence.One of the best scenes that stick out no doubt are the elepahant funeral scene which is probably the daftest thing I've ever seen in my life, the only other big funeral for an animal is Lil Sepashian in the TV show "Parks and Rec." But the big coffin is dropped down a cliff as food for some white powered villagers storm after it and cut it out and passes parts of the dead elephant. This is obviously metaphor of sexuality and the loss of innocence.Also there is a lot of use with the hands and arms that correlate with the Phenix myth. We see Bianca's religious sect that she possibly created based on a innocent virgin girl that got her arms cut off by some rapists and of course the same fate happens to her. In a way I feel it once again represents the destruction of the Phenix, in a way both women's wings get cut off.But also the back and forth between both Fenix and the deaf mute girl Alna which I think is sweet even though she doesn't talk it was thought her words and facial expressions toward him. The chemistry between both is beautiful because she is the one that can truly give him him freedom because she can give him the one thing he sorely lacks, love. And this is reflected from her constantly giving him the sign of the Phoenix flight. Alna is the protagonist that we bet on and throughout the film are constantly hoping that she will find him and save him, because she herself is a true Phoenix and can make him truly fly.After destruction comes the rise.Rating: 4 stars

zetes Never thought this would appear on DVD, but now here it is both there and on Blu Ray. I watched it on the latter format, and it looks great, of course. This film is important in my development as a film buff. I probably owe my love of cult films to it more than to any other film. I caught it in that important summer right after college, where I saw just a ton of great films. I had never heard of this, but I saw it in the foreign section and the cover intrigued me. It instantly became one of my favorites, and I rented it several more times over the years. I haven't seen it for well over a decade now, which means that I was a tad worried about whether it would hold up.I wasn't that worried, though, because I have watched Fando and Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain in the meantime, and I do still like all of those movies fine. Yes, Santa Sangre holds up very nicely. I realized in the intervening years that Jodorowsky isn't a director to take seriously, no matter how seriously he takes himself (he definitely thinks he's one of the greatest geniuses to walk the Earth). Though one would think that it should be Bunuel to fill the roll, I think of Jodorowsky as the Salvador Dali of cinema. I don't like to put Bunuel in that spot because, unlike Dali, Bunuel is a fully fledged artist. Dali just liked to draw weird crap. But, hey, it's neat and fun to look at. Jodorowsky has an imagination much like Dali, throwing a bunch of weird, neat, fun crap on the screen for me to ogle. I do still think Santa Sangre is Jodorowsky's strongest work, because there's enough of a story (which is pretty much a take on Psycho) to keep it from getting boring.