Cinema: Cosmological Circus

Every midnight for the past seven months, the Elgin Theater in New York City's Chelsea district has presented a screening of an exceedingly curious and especially arresting film called El Topo (The Mole). An allegorical western made in Mexico by a Chilean-Russian stage director named Alexandro Jodorowsky, El Topo has not been shown at all outside Manhattan; reviews, aside from the underground press, have been few and mostly negative. Nonetheless, the film has been kept alive by word of mouth spread by a burgeoning band of fierce partisans. Dennis Hopper had it screened at his home in Taos, N. Mex., and...