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The Dance of Reality is the first film in decades from well-loved cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, The Holy Mountain). The film is a quasi-autobiography from the filmmaker, covering his childhood in a Chilean coastal town. Jodorowsky is played by young Jeremias Herskovits, while Brontis Jodorowsky (Alejandro’s real-life son) plays the filmmaker’s father. It’s far from a straight-forward recollection. Jodorowsky goes off into frequent flights of fancy, whether it’s all the fish in the ocean suddenly washing ashore only to be eaten by swarms of hungry birds, or an old man digging his own grave before lying down and literally dying in it. These poetic moments are the movie’s strength, though some scenes got a little too absurd for my taste. At one point, Jodorowsky’s father is deathly ill, and his mother (who sings every one of her lines) saves him by squatting over his unconscious body and urinating on him.

Brontis Jodorowsky gives a very strong performance in the film, playing the tough-as-nails father who suffers political misfortune and hits his spiritual bottom, only to resurrect into a more human being. It’s only as he abandons his rigid, adult philosophies, that the father can become closer to the son in The Dance of Reality. This goes a long way in explaining the youthful exuberance with which Alejandro Jodorowsky approaches his work (he’s quite inspirational in Jodorowsky’s Dune).

The Dance of Reality wants to be revelatory, but ultimately offers nothing more than tired, simple faith and serendipity for us to latch onto. So at its core, the movie left me cold. On the other hand, the sharing of these sentiments feels genuine and personal — something so lacking in the vast majority of films, it should certainly be cherished.

Still… I have to wonder if maybe old Jodo’s had too many bong hits to know revelation from hallucination sometimes.

Or maybe when I’m older this hippie shit will make more sense to me.

In one of the finer moments in “The Dance of Reality,” Jodorowsky’s mother paints him black — the color of night — so that he may not be afraid of the dark.