SANTA SANGRE (1989) * Just because everyone knows that the Hollywood formula is limited, and that other options exist, doesn't mean that you have to try them or that they're all better. Claudio Argento co-wrote this, do you actually call it writing when events lead from one only semi-attached scene to another? Technically, I guess. I think Luis Buñuel made this kind of film look too easy, and now guys who couldn't do a decent Benji are trying it. Of course there's no reason that surrealism has to interface with reality or the collective subconscious or anything else; nor must it be exclusively concerned with beauty at the expense of all that is nauseating: therein lies the best defense for most of this film and if it's the sort of defense that you're inclined to entertain then there's some of it here. Alejandro Jodorowsky is not bereft of directive skills if someone could convince him to try to be more like John Hughes or less desperately like Salvadore Dali, one of the acoustic Spanish guitar themes (the one they show during the showdown between the riot cops and cultists, with capitalist religious leaders separating them) is very nice, and the final neo-Freudian scenes might have been exceptionally powerful had they come after...something else.
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