The Dance of Reality (La danza de la realidad). Alejandro Jodorowsky, 2013.
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Edition screened: Pathé/Abkco Blu-ray, released 2013. Spanish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 130 minutes.
Summary: Real and simulated animal deaths.
Details:
1) Thousands of sardines suddenly are stranded on a beach in a demonstration of magical or religious power, 7:32. The countless (real) fish flop and die while gulls descend. Peasants come on the beach at 8:45, throw the struggling fish into piles, then display them in a heap in their village. Over at 9:10.
2) A funeral for a bulldog shows the dead dog lying on an alter, 37:03-37:47. There is no trauma to the dog’s body.
3) A donkey’s throat is slit at 54:04, and the animal is forced to the ground by a throng of peasants who begin extracting meat. Over at 54:20.
4) An especially beautiful horse is shown falling and dying in his stall after eating poison flowers, 1:21:30-1:21:40. (Muscle relaxants clearly were used in filming.) Two men attend to the horse while he is lying on his side and depicted as dying through 1:21:56. He is shot off screen 1:23:37, with no further images.
The Dance of Reality recounts a pivotal time in Jodorowsky’s youth through the filter of a life spent studying mysticism and religion. Some scenes reflect his previous films, especially Santa Sangre (1989) with its settings of circus and Chilean poverty. The most emotional and shocking scenes in Santa Sangre are the (unexplained, apparently natural) death of the circus’s beloved baby elephant and the funeral of that animal which ends with peasants seizing the carcass for meat. In The Dance of Reality the (unexplained, apparently natural) death of the fire brigade’s bulldog mascot is followed soon by the peasant attack on a donkey that has carried much-needed water to them. The trappings of circus, heavy-set matriarchs, imprisoned torture, and confused distress about animals’ lives swirl within both films. Autobiographical truth lies within somewhere.
In the Mirror of Maya Deren. Martina Kudláček, 2001.
