El Topo

El Topo (, "The Mole") is a 1970 Mexican acid Western film written, scored, directed by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky. Characterized by its bizarre characters and occurrences, use of maimed and dwarf performers, and heavy doses of Judeo-Christian symbolism and Eastern philosophy, the film is about El Topo—a violent, black-clad gunfighter played by Jodorowsky—and his quest for enlightenment. Plot El Topo is traveling through a desert on horseback with his naked young son, Hijo. After they come across a town whose people, horses and livestock have been slaughtered, El Topo hunts down and kills the perpetrators and their leader, a fat balding Colonel. El Topo leaves his son to the monks of the settlement's mission and rides off with a woman whom the Colonel had kept as a slave. After turning bitter water sweet by stirring it with a branch, El Topo names the woman Marah. In need of food and water, El Topo spaces Marah's feet apart and digs up eggs from the sand beneath them, then utters a prayer before shooting a rock, which then releases water. When Marah tries these same techniques, she turns up nothing, seeming to lack El Topo's faith. After El Topo tears her clothes and apparently rapes her, Marah promptly becomes able to find eggs and water. She tells El Topo she will not return his love unless he proves himself the best gun-fighter by defeating the desert's four great gun masters. Each gun master represents a particular religion or philosophy, and El Topo learns from each of them before instigating a duel. El Topo is victorious each time, not through superior skill but through trickery or luck. After the first duel, a black-clad woman who speaks with a man's voice finds the couple and guides them to the remaining gun masters. As he kills each master, El Topo has increasing doubts about his mission, but Marah persuades him to continue. After the final gun master outsmarts El Topo by killing himself before El Topo is able to kill him, El Topo becomes ridden with guilt, destroys his own gun and revisits the places where he killed the masters, finding their corpses either on fire, covered with geometrical objects, or swarming with bees. The unnamed woman confronts El Topo and shoots him several times in the manner of stigmata.