Endless Poetry is a 2016 French-Chilean surrealist psychological drama film directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. The film centres around Jodorowsky youth in Santiago in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Endless poetry is about changing to past form suffering to joy, the inevitability of death, finding Happiness and fixing the past moving forward to find a better future.
The film begins focusing on the Jodorowsky family now living in Santiago Chilli, where they live on the road of a working-class neighbourhood, which is shown to be full of violence as a butcher kills a thief that stole his meat. Alejandro is sacred by this and is timed being 12 years old. The people in this town as shown to being faceless ranging from butchers to prostitutes showcasing them as faceless people in a crowd, as the film also shows that fascism is on the rise in the country. Jodorowsky’s father Jamie is still a strong militant man. he tries to make his son militant and tries to make him, and his son kick a man for stealing in a perverse way of father and son bonding. Jamie then strips the female thief in public humiliating her, however kindness is shown as the two thieves’ hug each other. Alejandro’s mother sings all her lines, as his mother was a humiliated woman who wanted to be an opera singer, but her family forced her to work in a store. Jamie’s wife laments nothing has changed he is still cruel however he is doing what he can to support them. Alejandro’s grandmother lives with them and complains. However, his mum says that with gods help they will open a batter shop and on the anniversary of her father’s death she bakes a cake and he died chocking as his grandmother cries in the cake.
Alejandro discovers and reads poetry hinting at the spiritual person he will become. His dad however is a strict rationalist materialist, stating that all artists are fags throwing the book out and making him read biology to become a doctor and not wanting him to cry. His mother gives him the gift of her brother’s violin to learn to learn at a music academy. She wants him to become the replacement brother she lost; he states that the box looks like a coffin as she is trapping him in something he doesn’t want to as he is saddened by this. He then comes across kids who act like dogs who say he had a corpse that stinks in the form of the violin, and he throws it in their fire, as a homeless man approaches him saying a virgin will help him as he found great poetic meaning in his words. This childlike wonder is contrasted with the brutal reality of a knife fight outside of the store as Alejandro writes poetry on a typewriter however, his dad is like advice in his head tormenting him as he crushes the poetry up, he gets rid of him in his head as the poetry is set light destroying his old exitance as he is putting himself on a new path. Jamie disinfects the money with the help of Alejandro as he still has a communist ideology despite now being a capitalist, as Stella makes dessert hearts for dinner. An earthquake shakes the house as Alejandro freaks out as his dad says a coward and not to ruled by fear as he grabs his bike for comfort which his dad puts down. His dad shows him scrambling outside as his dad states they are no better than dogs as they must be brave and laugh at the face of death, he the slaps him for smiling as they count the money. This is symbolic of Jodowsky’s mind breaking at the semes being angry and wanting to rip everything down opt create a new.
Jodowsky’s uncle was a gay paedophile, and his mum’s family were strict horrible people that treated his mum like a slave. Alejandro states his going to be a poet to which they say he’ll starve as his dad gets angry saying it was a joke. The family paly a rigged game of cards and smoke cigars hidden in the bible as he goes to destroy the garden and cuts down the tree in anger destroying his family cutting them out form his life. His cousins praise him for this takes him to his friends who are artist and sculpture as he is reborn. Jodorowsky shows them his poetry, as he is a mythical hero that fled his family. He is a beautiful boy who is doomed to live a boring life for his parents, however he them takes off his mask to be himself. He now doesn’t fear anymore he is reborn and wants to return to himself, his friend them comes onto him but he says he is not gay and leaves in distress. He is now in his twenties a free man, as people who live there include symbolic dancers, blarinas and wrestlers. These people include a signer swinging on a swing, a crazy paint that smashes up pianos with hammers and a painter throwing paint at a canvas. They are a band of outsiders, and he is happy that he sold his soul to the devil. He tries his hand at puppetry as he likes people who aren’t gods, as he trough puppets tells the story of his life being doomed to worship an evil woman as shown by the viper that he goes to meet. The bar he meets her in has the atmosphere of funeral with people being like the dead. The viper then walks into the bar. She wears bright clothes, clown makeup and red hair as he shouts at them for being nothing as she is more manly drinking more beer than one of the dead men who find his luck and gets punched. Alejandro is infatuated by her because she is a poet and not in a sexual way. He follows her as she puts him to sleep and gets off as he goes after her. She thinks he wants to have sex with her and makes him show her his penis as he is a virgin which makes him romantic. He is an introduced to a mime and is a poetic romantic whilst she is hardened. She writes sexual charged poetry as he even finds the magic in a dingy bar dancing. He gives himself for her as one of the horny old men tries to seduce her.
Jodorowsky then goes to the café the following night to meet The Viper but it turns out she is just a seducer on men which he is angry about, it then turns out the other man was a poet that rejects them both. She then cuts her and Alejandro’s hand binding them together, as she is saving herself to the divine but beyond that they will do everything else but sex together as one. Orpheus doesn’t see his lover naked therefore The Viper binds Jodorowsky, and though the connection he can tell what she is doing as he touches her tattoos skulls on her back, she is death as they have sex both a demon and an angel. Back home Alejandro’s mum is sad that he’s gone but his dad doesn’t care as they have sex in both a natural and unnatural way as she misses her son and even his dad is saddened. He becomes a thief to get food for him and Stella by stealing his parents’ money, for Alejandro poetry is the reason to live as stella says she is too much for him to handle but she is not as they are together. Alejandro is worried about Stella’s alcoholism nut she ignores him being sexy for booze which he doesn’t like. They then enter a gay bar as the men take a shine to Alejandro and try to rape him, but Stella beats him up.
Alejandro slaps Stella and they break up, they then find Richardo who commits suicide via hanging in front of the university of Chile as he didn’t want to be an architect. He reached the end he is doomed but he is at peace. Alejandro has an identity crisis he has become part of Stella and not himself and wishes to be free of her chaos he wants to be aloof. He goes back to being a puppeteer making faces as he has lost his own identity and wants to symbolically create a mirror of himself to be himself. He meets Stella in the bar again as she has found someone who is like a god. She is no longer a virgin as Alejandro lets her go like a dove, she cuts of her hair and gives it to him as he burns it as he is done with that part of his life. He sings about losing his soul to her. He the focuses on puppetry selling them to a woman that introduces him to a master puppeteer. They talk telepathically they get to know each other well though this, as the communicate with puppets as Alejandro lets them keep each other’s puppets as they say he is a gift from God as he gives him the studio.
He turns the place into his own paradise inviting all kinds of outsiders to a party where he makes people confess their desires allowing to people to express their love, the poet there talks behind a mirror to see himself. Jodorowsky befriends Enrique Lihn whose parents live in fear of the Cold War as they are symbolical dead. Enrique shows Jodorowsky his poetry room, walls filled with poetry scribbles. The film has a theme that everything vanishes, as they conclude that since people thinks poets are weird, they must act weird going in a straight line over trucks, through houses and going into forbidden zones being chased by dogs, as poetry is an act. Alejandro and Enrique, then perform at a prestigious place where they shout at these classy arty upper-class intellectual. They throw meat and eggs at them in protest as they then deface the statues as a tribute to the artists. He then has a tarot reading form a woman he shows the devil showing the loss of innocence and the dark side it creates, the star as he will have many women until he finds his ideal one, they then all spin around symbolically connecting them with the universe.
Jodorowsky’s older self then talks to him saying he will be a poet, he fears living sating he has done nothing wrong for living the way he has, he sates life has no meaning you just must live it. Jodorowsky has a fight with Enrique Lihn’s girlfriend who he saves from committing suicide. He makes her close her eyes as he leads her and when she opens them, he dangles her over a river. As she says not to drop her, he puts her down on the bridge showing she does not truly wish to die. She is then all better as they have sex with her on her period, he says that blood is sacred as they have sex as Enrique drinks and bangs outside. Alejandro and Enrique confront each other as he states that he was at his peak but now he has fallen as he drunkenly attacks Alejandro and shouts in rage leaving as they mourn the broken bridge, as Enrique checks herself in fore electroshock therapy. Enrique has become one of the living dead drinking at the bar as she goes off with another dwarf, as Alejandro convinces himself he is not guilty of this, and he is just a clown.
He wears clown shoes that reminds him of his childhood, and he meets Carrot the orange clown again ow as an old man. Alejandro Decides he must go back for the child in his soul as he goes to the circus and becomes a clown in an anti-Chilean racism act were he comedically beats himself an tries to kill himself in a funny way. He opens his heart to a crowd saying that his best friend hates him because he betrayed him, he slept with his girlfriend who possibly gave him syphilis and she might now be pregnant. The film sates that life is a game and you must laugh at bad things and suffering is stupid. Jodorowsky then shed his mask stating he is not a clown he is a poet as he strips naked for the crowd exposing himself as he is carried like a Christlike figure, he is sacrificing himself his ego in order too be reborn better. His dream is to be never found always lost so he and be in ever in search of an encounter. He attends the funeral of Stella he also dies metaphorically. He then also reconciles with Enrique who makes up with his girlfriend they hit and kiss each other making up as they are metaphorically born again. Alejandro meets his parents again who inform him that his house his burnt as Jamie only cares about materialism says they lost their money whilst Alejandro laments, they lost his poems as in his father’s eyes he has no heart. Alejandro is happy the house burned down and celebrate with the rest of them that this chapter in his life is over tap dancing on it grave with the rest of them.
Alejandro is then struck by a sadness that his childhood is gone, as his mother’s old self is symbolically destroyed with the burnt girdle. He ends up mourning, but his friends convince him to move on as they attend the carnival of death symbolically showing the death of his old life as the skeletons represent death and the devil hell as the burnt house is paraded around. Alejandro is dressed like an angel drunk and vomiting as he has an identity crisis looking in the mirror, he asks who he is, what is the propose for his exitance and why is he alive. He is symbolically dead around the symbolically dead. He will cease to be along with everything else. However, Jodorowsky says it’s pointless to divorce yourself from everything and the only thing you can do is be the best version of yourself. Jodorowsky talks to an engineering professor about him wanting to be a poet as he states he must be a butterfly, but the teacher tells him not to burn bridges as you can’t change the world but start by changing yourself. The fascism of Ibanez is on the rise in Chile due to his second period in office as the bar is falling apart and it looks like the end of the world therefore Jodorowsky decides he must save surrealism. Jodorowsky takes his father’s ideology to heart shouting death to Ibanez as he walks towards him, but he cannot or do anything as they are brainwashed. He then saying goodbye to his fiends signing and playing guitar about him leaving.
At the climax of the film his father confronts Jodorowsky at the dock saying not to go as it makes no logical sense, but he resists, he says that his dad never had his love but his dad cares about him in his own way saying he will starve. They get into a fight where he beats his dad saying he will never see him again as his dad sates his dad always wanted what was best for him as Jodorowsky shakes Jamie’s hand with Jamie on the ground. Alejandro then interrupts raising them to the same level, he says that they never sore each other again and that he was not sad when he died but deep down, he loved him, and he was important to his life. He states that by giving him nothing he gave him everything, by not loving him he gave him everything, by not loving him he taught him love is an absolute necessity and that by denying God, he taught him to value life. He forgives his father he gave him the strength to bare this poetless world, he finally sees him as his father removing his mask and sees him as a human as shown by him symbolically shaving his dads head bald as they kiss each other goodbye. The film ends with Jodorowsky’s mum walking around the cardboard cut outs of people from his past as he sailed off in a boat captained by a skeleton, this period of his life is over and something new will come. The voiceover reenforces this saying this part of his life is over and that he has learnt to love and to create as every path in life opens a path to your heart showing you the woes of the world.
Endless Poetry is a film about confronting your past with all its horrors and unresolved conflicts as well as the happiness it brings. It shows the importance of learning from your life and moving from the past shackles that tie you down and moving on leaning to love and opening your heart.