‘Heil Jupiter!’ Review: Mexican Arthouse Auteur Carlos Reygadas Takes a Beguiling Cinematic Trip to Nowhere

Iconoclastic Mexican director Carlos Reygadas continues to test the boundaries of cinema, and the patience of many a viewer, in his latest audaciously executed head trip, Heil Jupiter!

Making its world premiere at the New York Film Festival, this highly experimental and exhausting experience hops across several continents, time periods and languages — including an invented one used for many dialogue scenes — as it follows four friends whose lives go from heavenly to hellish over the course of 158 minutes. Who these people are and what they’ve even doing seem to matter less to Reygadas than plunging us into visceral scenes of sex, authoritarian violence and head-scratching surrealism taking place amid lots of breathtaking backdrops shot across the globe. There are definitely some unforgettable images in Heil Jupiter!, but good luck trying to make heads or tails of them.

Heil Jupiter!

The Bottom Line Visually arresting and totally self-indulgent.

Venues: New York Film Festival (Currents)
Cast: Neli de la Rosa, Alexis Sánchez Alonso, Flor de León, Alexis Said Villa de León
Director-screenwriter: Carlos Reygadas
2 hours 38 minutes

The Mexican auteur started off in the early aughts with a trio of strikingly directed arthouse flicks (Japón, Battle in Heaven, Silent Light) combining a form of minimalist realism with something more animalistic and otherworldly, as if the work of Robert Bresson had been rejiggered by Terence Malick. For his fourth feature, Post Tenebras Lux, Reygadas took a major detour toward the avant-garde and the personal, in a move that garnered him some detractors while pleasing his more hardcore fans. He went even further with 2018’s Nuestro tiempo, which felt much more self-indulgent than exploratory.

In terms of pure brazenness , Heil Jupiter! marks another leap forward for the director, who has crafted a movie that showcases his trademark visual inventiveness during nearly three hours of head-scratching nonsense. This could again please Reygadas’ diehard followers, while others will be left baffled by a film that seems to be making things up as it goes along. At best, this boldly immersive effort will find a home at other festivals and in one-off screenings, whereas general indie distribution seems unlikely.

The movie kicks off with a bunch of abstract colors and shapes flashing on screen for a while, as if we were watching an animated Rothko painting or being brainwashed à la The Parallax View. Reygadas then hurls us into the sea during a long shot of waves hitting the camera, until he finally cuts away to reveal a band of amigos — Lina (Neli de la Rosa), Milu (Alexis Sánchez Alonso), Tzina (Flor de León) and Said (Alexis Said Villa de León) — embarking on a fun-filled and rather graphic foursome by the seashore. The lengthy opening sequence ends with the camera literally descending into one of the guy’s butts and then up into his bowels, which could be read as a metaphor for this entire project.

Shot by a handful of cameramen, with Daniel Valdés Serrano receiving top credit, Heil Jupiter! shares a similar look to Reygadas’ recent features, using a box-like 1.33:1 frame and short focal lengths to give everything an experiential, you-are-there quality. Sometimes the images are blurred along the edges, while other shots seem to have been manipulated using CGI. The soundtrack is filled with layered mixing punctuated by the occasional burst of operatic or choral music (the score is credited to ten people, including Reygadas).

It’s worth emphasizing the film’s imagery because it’s otherwise hard to discern anything resembling a plot. After the opening orgy, we cut to fighter jets flying over snow-capped peaks in search of a “Mysterious Earth Sound.” Then we’re inside a cave lighted by campfire, where we see Lina and Tzina giving each other manual pleasure while other semi-naked folks dance around them. Then we’re in Poland, where the bodycam of a local cop reveals a raid on an immigrant family that includes Tzina, who now has several children. Later, she’s brought in a police car to a nearby pond, strapped to an excavator and dunked into the water as a crowd of anti-immigrant protestors cheer on the public execution.

The other characters don’t fare much better in a film that takes us from the ecstasy of sexual freedom to scenes of torture, humiliation and degradation, including one long sequence set in a meat factory specializing in human body parts. Much of the closing reel of Heil Jupiter! focuses on a trial during which Lina is accused of witchcraft by the Mexican authorities, in extended dialogue scenes shot like they’re on Court TV. Excuse me, but what hell is going on here? (Emphasis on hell, which describes the general mood during much of the film, even if the ending offers up a semi-surreal form of hope.)

In the press notes, Reygadas claims he was “seeking out images and sounds, all undefined, without structure but clearly trembling together.” That’s probably a good summary of what he’s accomplished here, because one would be hard pressed to make sense of this unrestrained mess of a movie. That doesn’t mean Heil Jupiter! lacks a certain power, especially during some of its more visually absorbing moments, but taken as a whole — and a long one at that — it leaves you feeling submerged, indundated and tiredly washed ashore, just like in its neverending opening shot.