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Fando and Lis

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Ever since I first heard about Alejandro Jodorowsky's "El Topo," I wanted to see it. Supposedly on the surface a spaghetti western, but so much more underneath, the movie sounded delightfully bizarre in a way I often enjoy. Well, I have not gotten a chance to see this movie yet since it has not come out on DVD. When I saw the opportunity to watch "Fando and Lis," an earlier film from the same director, I grabbed the chance figuring that something was better than nothing. I was wrong. While "Fando and Lis" does contain some interesting scenes, this Jodorowsky picture dwells deep in the land of surrealism. Nonsensical films do not usually bother me as long as there is some sort of touchstone to hang your hat on. A director can take his project completely over the top as long as a plot exists somewhere under the madness. This is the central problem of "Fando and Lis." The film, a totally improvised production based on memory and a one-page synopsis of a play written by Francisco Arrabal, never makes a bit of sense. It's theater of the absurd time here, folks, so prepare for the ultimate in weirdness. Fortunately, the disc also contains "Constellation Jodorowsky," a documentary about the filmmaker and artist that follows a more traditional approach to storytelling.

"Fando and Lis" tells the story of, predictably, Fando (Sergio Kleiner) and his main squeeze Lis (Diana Mariscal) in glorious black and white photography. The two live in a post-apocalyptic world, in an environment of desert climes and shattered cities. Earth as we know it is gone, so Fando and Lis begin a quest for the mythical city of Tar, a city that seems to promise hope and regeneration for the weary couple. The only possessions they have appear to be a drum, a phonograph, and a wooden cart in which Lis serenely rides. She cannot walk, for some reason, so her man pushes her around wherever they go. The two are a temperamental pair, with Fando often tiring of dealing with Lis's constant complaints. All of this information is the only thing we know for sure about the movie. You see, "Fando and Lis" soon embarks on a bizarre odyssey of disjointed scenes, sparse scenery, and downright odd secondary characters. Never before has such an incoherent movie found its way to my DVD player. And you thought Luis Bunuel or Salvador Dali were weird. Until you check out Jodorowsky, you ain't seen nothing yet. This movie would give Sigmund Freud a nervous breakdown.

I can offer no ample explanations for the unfolding silliness. Scenes and situations include a piano on fire collapsing and then reconstituting itself only to collapse again, a bunch of people rolling about in the mud while a religious figure cackles madly in the background, and a bunch of old ladies sitting around a table eating something that looks like eggs while a guy in a diaper lurches around in the background. You get more, such as a blindfolded Fando led around by women, a scene in which some strange guy drains blood from Lis's arm into a wine glass, and a funeral scene where Fando's mother lies down in her grave. Are you still here? Good, because I have not described my favorite scene yet. It's just as unfathomable as any other situation in the film, but it's so ridiculous that it bears mentioning. At one point, Fando stumbles over a bunch of Amazonian type women who chase him around a craggy hill while knocking him down with bowling balls. Yep, you heard right-bowling balls. Just when Fando thinks he has escaped these wacky women, another bowling ball comes crashing down a hill and fells our hero like he's a pin. Jodorowsky missed out on really giving the scene meaning by failing to shod these gals with bowling shoes. As for the music score, you have to listen to it yourself to believe how peculiar it is.

What could this madness possibly imply? Good luck figuring it all out. As far as I can tell, the film means whatever you want it to mean. I would not worry too much about extracting a coherent theme from "Fando and Lis" unless you want to end up in a rubber room for a few years. What really threw me for a loop was how much I enjoyed specific parts of the movie. I usually despise films this whimsical, but Jodorowsky's vision occasionally possessed a certain charm that made the whole thing worthwhile. That scene with the paint was interesting, as was the couple posing over tombstones. Yet, I would never attempt to recommend the movie to anyone else. It's way too abnormal for you to take my word that you should possibly watch the picture. You have to decide yourself whether to dive in to Jodorowsky's film

"Constellation Jodorowsky" is a bit easier on the eyes and ears. The documentary runs nearly as long as "Fando and Lis." Consisting of lengthy interviews with the director about such diverse subjects as life, philosophy, and theology, "Constellation" shows us what the filmmaker does with his time nowadays. Apparently, he teaches some course at a university where he tosses off lots of new age aphorisms to a docile audience. These scenes run far too long and take away from the more interesting segments, namely the discussion about Frank Herbert's "Dune." Incredibly, Jodorowsky nearly directed the film adaptation of the book, going so far as to hire an artist to draw storyboards. His plans for "Dune" looked fabulous; it's too bad the project went to David Lynch. Only purveyors of atypical cinema should check out this disc. For me, I am still waiting for "El Topo" to come out on DVD.

Fans of the hyperbolic director Alejandro Jodorowsky ("El Topo") should love this episodic psychodrama loosely based on an absurdist play by Fernando Arrabal. Though obviously a first feature with uneven pacing and often washed out over-exposed scenes, the film makes up for its deficits with an abundance of surprising images. Set in a devastated appocalyptic landscape, we follow a young sadomasochistic couple on their desperate search for a magical city named "Tar." The girl, Lis, is paralyzed and must be pushed around on a rickety cart by Fando. As in "El Topo" a parade of emblematic characters appear out of nowhere to taunt and teach them. Many of these scenes have a wierd sense of humor as when bowling balls are used as weapons, or Fando's mother force feeds him hard boiled eggs. Some of these visions appear more fully formed in Jodorowsky's later films as when a live bird is pulled from the chest of Fando's father. It is difficult to watch the misogynist brutal torture of Lis which intensifies toward the end of the film, but Jodorowsky's intention is never to make the viewer comfortable. Like the mute girl in "Sante Sangre," Lis portrays a certain male fantasy of the pure woman as one who accepts torment with acceptance and forgiveness. The film was shot by Raphael Cokidi who went on to shoot Jodorowsky's next two works and to direct allegorical films himself. The feature length documentory "Jodorowsky Constellation" is an added bonus and portrays the director's current life in France. There are some nice excerpts from "El Topo" and "The Holy Mountain" but curiously none from the later "Sante Sangre." Also interviewed are Marcel Marceau, Fernando Arrabal and Peter Gabriel though they are not indentified by subtitles. Unfortunately the long "therapy" session at the end lessens the impact of this otherwise competent profile. The package is well put together and includes a picture brochure from the orginal showing of "Fando and Lis."

This is the first feature film from Chilean avant-garde filmmaker Alexandro Jodorowsky, which caused riots on its premiere in Acapulco in 1968. It's a strange tale of a man and woman, who wander around a barren landscape searching for the mystical city of Tar. And also to seek enlightenment from an assortment of strange characters. It's not for everyone, but if you like your movies out there in the extremes of surrealism and symbolism, this one is for you. The DVD also includes a interesting documentary where Jodorowsky is interviewed, and we learn of his philosophy and opinions, which are always fascinating. A must own DVD for fans of avant-garde cinema.

Considered lost for nearly 30 years, FANDO & LIS had its premiere at the 1968 Acapulco Film festival. What should have marked the arrival of a new master of the surreal instead degenerated into a full-scale riot on the festival floor. The director barely escaped with his life and the festival was closed.

FANDO & LIS is first film from Alejandro Jodorowsky, the creator of such cult classics as EL TOPO, HOLY MOUNTAIN, and SANTA SANGRE. It is the story of two young lovers search for a mythic city called Tar. Very surreal and very fun!

Fantoma has done an excellent job of bringing this film to DVD. The transfer from the recently rediscovered original negative is wonderful and there are lots of cool extras like CONSTELLATION JODOROWSKY (a feature-length documentary on the director), audio commentary by Jodorowsky, and a reproduction of the 8-page handbill given out at the film's premiere in addition to the regular DVD booklet.

If you appreciate the unusual, this film is for you.

I bought this having been impressed by watching both 'El Topo' and 'Holy Mountain' a while ago (both unavailible in US; more information is at ...) and although lower budget this holds up very well to these later works. The transfer is very good, especially considering it was thought lost for so long; although there are several instances of print damage. The real highlight of this disc, however, are the numerous extras. The complete documentary 'Constellation Jodorowsky' runs at over an hour and is a very interesting insight into his career as a whole (not just his film making). Jodorowsky's commentary is at times disjoint, and his accent makes him difficult to understand (although subtitles are availible) but he comes across extremely well as every bit the eccentric, offbeat character one would expect; as well as sharing many facts about the production and the film's troubled past. The inclusion of the original 8-page handbill was a welcome addition for any collector. Now, here's hoping one day someone will get around the legal complications and give 'El Topo' and 'Holy Mountain' the same kind of treatment!

fando and lis is a good start for anyone interested in viewing the amazing films of alexandro jodorowski. currently this is the only dvd avalible of his early work, allen klein (of apple records fame) unfortunatly has the secured rights to el topo and the holy mountain (his 2 masterpieces) and flatly refuses to ever re-release the films. this is unfortunate because the amazing dvd treatment that fando and lis has received would be as equally as amazing for el topo and the holy mountain. fortunatly these 2 films are widely avalible on video through some foreign distributors. the film transfer is astounding and the bonus features are great. an enlightening documentary on jodorowski is featured on the dvd with interviews with marcel marceau, mobius, and peter gabriel who goes on to say that genesis's landmark concept album the lamb lies down on broadway was inspired by the films of jodorowski. equally as enlightening are the stills and treatments for jodorowski's unmade film adaptation of frank herbert's dune.fando and lis is a good film but by far not his best, lets just hope that allen klein sees fit to finally release el topo and the holy mountain for a whole new generation of impressionables.

Jodorowsky's FANDO & LIS is a unique and memorable experience. Adapted from the play by Arrabal, it is one of the most eerie and absurd quasi-narrative films I can recollect, short of some experimental Czech pictures.

In an effort to overcome Lis's paralysis, Fando carries Lis on his back (and pushes her on a cart) in search of the mythic city "Tar"; a discovery, in and of itself, which would cure her of the ailment. The rest of the film defies explanation.

If you like Fellini, Goddard, or Resnais, you will LOVE Jodorowsky. FANDO & LIS, Last Year At Marienbad, and Weekend, are similar films.

the world was a much happier place in 1999 & i can understand why. fando & lis was released on dvd by fantoma & we quivered with shameless delight. hence, there are slaves of jodorowsky still alive today but this any true fans' fantasy come true. hell, the interviews with jodorowsky himself &peter gabriel are literally worth the price you pay alone. yes, fantoma did this one up real nicely just like they did with jose mojica marins coffin joe trilogy. having never seen a jodorowsky film before, this was a complete shock to the system & an absolute eye opener. i have seen this film several times through the years & i'm still disturbed by it more than ever. of all the films i've ever watched, this one had an impact on me like no other. probability suggests we might truly hate this film if we're to know it's full meaning so i can say in all honesty that i hope i never fully understand it. supposedly, this film is based upon an avantguard play written by arrabal which jodorowsky loved. in fact, he mentions in an interview the play never made any money when he performed it & he deeply saddened by the fact they had to stop performing it when they ran out of money. fando & lis wasn't made on a huge budget from i can gather but the images will stay in your head for a very long time indeed. i'm reminded of the surrealism i've seen in films by rollin, lynch, or perhaps bunuel. yes, beautiful & erotic but haunting & somewhat grotesque. needless to say, there is a degree of ironic humor as well. fando & lis is a complicated, strange journey that reveals the darkest sides of human nature which are generally laced with a child-like innocence. in the beginning of the film, we are introduced to our characters & get a glimpse of their traumatic childhoods as well as fando's devotion to a crippled but beautiful young woman. the opening scene shows lis eating a flower & is a perfect metaphor for what we will see in the next 90 odd minutes. we are swallowing the beauty of the world around us amidst the chaos. in fact, we don't understand the true power or meaning of beauty so we clearly dispose of it without a moment's hesitation. this may not have been jodorowsky's intention ofcourse but i believe each person who views fando & lis will interpret his work in a unique way. i will visit this film again sometime & can only hope that fantoma or some dvd company will one day release the other five films of jodorowsky & do them up well just like this one. considered lost for nearly thirty years, i have to say it looks damn great & i'm proud to be an owner of this masterpiece.

Mention the name Alexandro Jodorowsky wherever two or more film buffs are gathered and a fight is only minutes away. Some argue that he is a latter day Bunuel whose non-linear style of storytelling illustrates the falsities and hypocrasies of the ruling class while others declare that he is a talentless poseur who incorporates his own LSD inspired ramblings into his scripts and "non linear" is just a fancy way of saying his plots make no sense.

Many directors have woven the search for the Meaning of Life into their plots. Ingmar Bergman, David Lynch, Carl Dreyer and Luis Bunuel among them especially. The thing about Jodorowsky is not that his characters are looking for the meaning OF life, rather they are seeking to give meaning TO their lives. This is not wrong per se, but the problem is the characters in EL TOPO, THE HOLY MOUNTAIN and even FANDO AND LIS all find what they are seeking, and that is where the problems begin, not end. While having a goal and dedicating your life to it is laudible in itself, once you have satisfied that goal where do you go? Is Life still meaningful once you have solved Meaning of same?

Not to reveal the ending of any of these movies but: There are disastrous results for everyone in these pictures once they reach their goal . . .which turns out to be not what they expected anyway. Fando and his crippled girlfriend Lis are on a journey to the legendary magical city of Tar where, both believe, Lis will be able to walk and all their problems will be solved. Along the way they meet all sorts of odd characters (the only kind who inhabit the Jodorowsky universe) and Fando tries to leave several times only to return repentant.

Jodorowsky seems to share a dislike of the upper classes of society with Bunuel. The representatives of the upper crust we encounter are narrow minded ineffectual idiots anxious to maintain the status quo because that is the only life they know and they are unwilling to accept change (think about the townsfolk in EL TOPO and compare them to the rich people in VIRIDIANA). Tar may be no more real than El Dorado or Atlantis but as long as they are actively involved in searching for it, Fando and Lis's live have meaning.

The question ultimately put before them and, by proxy, also before us is this: Is the realisation of this goal worth it? And what happens if we arrive at the wrong answer? Of course with Jodorowsky the wrong answer is the only one anyone ever seems to reach, EL TOPO being the prime example of this. FANDO AND LIS reaches a climax which, while not wholly unexpected, is no less heartbreaking because we saw it coming.

This film was withdrawn for several film festivals worldwide and allegedly caused riots when it was shown in Brazil. It was withdrawn from distribution for many years by Jodorowsky himself but is now available on videocassette and DVD. So is this man an unsung genius? You figure it out, I'm going home.

Director Alejandro Jodorowsky was a friend and working colleague at one time or another with such colorful and interesting figures as Salvador Dali, HR Giger, Jean Moebius Giraud, Juan Lopez Moctezuma [ALUCARDA], Marcel Marceau, and Fernando Arrabal. FANDO & LIS was Jodorowsky's first full-length motion picture, and it caused a riot when it premiered in Mexico in 1968. Jodorowsky even faced a deportation trial because of the controversy.

Remarkably, I found this DVD copy of Jodorowsky's FANDO & LIS at the public library. I checked it out. Initial impression -- a lot like Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's UN CHIEN ANDALOU or Jean Cocteau's BLOOD OF A POET. I watched FANDO & LIS not long after viewing Werner Herzog's AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD -- a strange film to mention in this review, perhaps, but oddly there's a similar theme here.

In Jodorowsky's movie, two lovers, Fando (Sergio Kleiner) and Lis (the pixie-like Diana Mariscal), embark on a journey for the mythical city of Tar. In Tar, all one's dreams come true, all one's earthly problems are solved. As Fando takes Lis to Tar, a journey-narrative begins. Lis is paralyzed from the waist down; Fando pushes her on a cart throughout the movie as she holds a phonograph and a drum. Lis hopes Tar will enable her to walk again.

Unlike Herzog's movie -- which was about a search for El Dorado, the mythical city of gold -- the main characters in this search for the mythical city of Tar are sympathetic -- especially Lis. (In Herzog's movie the main character is a sadistic megalomaniac.) They're portrayed as youthful, innocent, vibrant, and, of course, in love. At times Diana Marsical reminds one of Giulietta Masina from Fellini's films. Jodorowsky said this was a movie about how "sadomasochistic society" corrupts innocence.

En route to Tar, Fando and Lis encounter mud people, cavort in cemeteries, and experience Freudian flashbacks to their respective childhoods. The journey to Tar seems actually to be a psychological journey, weaving external events with the internal symbolism of the main character's psyches. The movie plays like a series of avant garde vignettes strung together end-on-end with the two main characters recurring in each one. It is in these vignettes that we learn more about Fando and Lis's backgrounds, as well as their relationship to each other.

In one encounter, a group of crossdressers swarm upon Fando, regale him, and proceed to dress him as a woman while simultaneously dressing the disabled Lis as a man. The two become mirror opposites of one another, briefly, as they discover they've been outfitted in each other's clothes. In another memorable and quite beautiful scenario (from which the DVD cover picture is taken), Fando paints his name all over Lis's body as she lays among discarded dolls.

One of the more stomach-churning encounters involves a blind man and his father, who, vampire-like, beg Lis for some of her blood. Fando consents to let them take it, and the father proceeds to extract some of Lis's blood from her arm with a syringe. I'm not sure if they filmed Diana Marsical (Lis) really getting her blood drawn, but it certainly looks like it. It's all one long camera shot -- the syringe going into the vein and the blood slowly filling the needle, then squirted into a small wine glass where the old man greedily drinks it. The blind son licks the glass clean. Pretty disgusting, and petty daring for 1960s cinema, too, if it's all real.

One of my favorite scenes is Fando's flashback to visiting his mom's deathbed as a youngster. His mom is grotesque and domineering, with a croaking, sinister voice that hardly sounds as if it belongs to a woman. She lays on her elaborate deathbed, hooked up to an absurd line of IVs and surrounded by candles. Her death bed is made up like a perverse Mardi Gras float and is pushed by scantily-clad "nurses" among a crowd of admirers in what looks like a large subterranean basement. The young Fando is clearly afraid of his mother, who thanks all the onlookers by dedicating her death to them, her "fans."

Fando is at turns loving and cruel to Lis. At one point he abandons her at the bottom of a circular pit that reminds one of a miniature version of Dante's hell. Lis is helpless and pitiable, and totally dependent on Fando. His resentment of her dependence and subsequent callousness to her seems to owe a bit to Federico Fellini's LA STRADA. In fact, FANDO & LIS was felt to be "Fellini-esque" by some of the early marketers of the movie; they tried to edit it early on to appeal to Fellini fans, according to the DVD liner notes. This DVD contains the original version, however.

In the end, Fando and Lis do not find Tar. Lis is never able to walk -- in fact, she dies. Fando visits her grave "with a flower and a dog" as he promised to her near the beginning of the movie. Inexplicably, Lis rises from the grave, nude, childlike and pure, able to walk in this dream-like sequence.

The documentary that accompanies the film is helpful in setting FANDO & LIS within the artistic milieu from which it arose. FANDO & LIS is essentially a product of the Panic Movement ("Panic" after the Greek god Pan), a mainly Spanish and Latin American reaction to the course Surrealism had taken under the dictatorial guidance of Andre Breton. According to Jodorowsky, Breton had made Surrealism acceptable, respectable, and "petit bourgeois" -- it's appeal had spread to conservative art collectors when originally it was a shocking, threatening, and transgressive phenomenon. The Panic Movement sought to correct this by staging outrageous plays and art happenings that featured nudity, urinating on religious icons, cacophonous music, and the like. FANDO & LIS definitely translates some of this outrageousness to the big screen, what with its nudity, controversial subject matter (crossdressers, the blood drinking), and jarring images (the black dominatrix with the whip, Lis licking her lips amongst a pile of cow skulls, etc.).