Analysis of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 2013 film La danza de la realidad as both a cinematic work and a psychomagical autobiography.
Strikingly vibrant, high-saturation colors that clash with the bleak, dusty desert landscapes of Tocopilla.
"La danza de la realidad" is ultimately a family affair, taken to a surreal and literal extreme. The casting choices were arguably psychomagical acts in themselves. Jodorowsky cast his own son, Brontis, to play the role of his hated father, Jaime. This forced a dynamic where the artist's son had to embody the figure that had wounded his father. Brontis delivers a magnificent, charismatic performance, transforming a brute into a complex, almost tragic figure by the film's end.
Critics who praised the film highlighted its newfound sincerity and narrative coherence compared to his earlier, more sprawling works. Detractors pointed to what they saw as repetitive imagery, a bloated runtime, and a sense of overly familiar provocation. Yet, the consensus was near-universal on one point: "The Dance of Reality" marks the triumphant return of an irreplaceable cinematic voice, a director who refuses to be colonized by Hollywood norms and continues to fight for a cinema that transforms and awakens rather than merely entertains.
: Jodorowsky views this work as an "act of healing". He uses psychomagic —a therapeutic system he developed that combines psychoanalysis, shamanic rituals, and art—to address deep-seated family wounds. alejandro jodorowsky la danza de la realidad
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While autobiographical, La danza de la realidad expands into a critique of Chilean history under Carlos Ibáñez del Campo’s dictatorship. The film’s most audacious sequence involves a group of anarchists and communists being herded into a stadium, where the tyrant Ibáñez (played by Jodorowsky himself) demands they renounce their ideals. When they refuse, he orders them burned alive. One anarchist, Carlos, embraces his immolation as a martyrdom, crying, “Long live pain!” This scene is not historical reportage but a psychomagical exaggeration: it externalizes the collective trauma of political repression as a burning spectacle.
: Directed by Jodorowsky, it marks his return to filmmaking after a 23-year hiatus.
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La Danza de la Reality holds a unique place in contemporary culture. For cinema enthusiasts, it marked Jodorowsky’s triumphant return to filmmaking after a 23-year hiatus following The Rainbow Thief (1990). It proved that the visionary behind El Topo and The Holy Mountain had not lost his surrealist edge, but had instead matured, trading shock value for deep, humanistic empathy.
The work traces Jodorowsky’s early years in the remote Chilean town of
Ultimately, La Danza de la Realidad is an invitation to view our own lives not as a series of random, unfortunate events, but as a sacred dance. Jodorowsky challenges us to become the choreographers of our own histories, using imagination, love, and art to heal the wounds of the past.
Released in 2013 at the Cannes Film Festival, the film marked Jodorowsky’s first directorial work in 23 years. Senses of Cinema Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929-) - Memoria Chilena The casting choices were arguably psychomagical acts in
A deeply difficult relationship with a Stalinist, authoritarian father and a loving but operatic mother.
When young Alejandro contemplates suicide due to his father's cruelty, he is visited by a mystical figure covered in gold leaf. Jodorowsky uses these dazzling visual metaphors to illustrate that even in moments of profound despair, the human imagination possesses a luminous, self-preserving quality. 4. The Director’s Presence: The Ultimate Psychomagic Act
In the vast landscape of world cinema, few directors possess a visionary footprint as distinct, provocative, and fiercely independent as Alejandro Jodorowsky. After a 23-year hiatus from narrative filmmaking following 1990’s The Rainbow Thief , the Chilean-French master returned in 2013 with La Danza de la Reality ( The Dance of Reality ). Far from a standard late-career retrospective, the film represents a triumphant, deeply moving culmination of Jodorowsky's lifelong artistic philosophy. It serves as both a radical reinvention of the cinematic memoir and a practical application of his therapeutic practice, Psychomagic.