The most explicit example of the film’s therapeutic mechanism occurs when the young Alejandro, feeling invisible and worthless, asks his father for a punishment. Jaime, in a bizarre act of misguided love, summons a group of firemen to douse the boy with a high-pressure hose, nearly drowning him. In a realist narrative, this would be child abuse. In La danza de la realidad , the boy smiles. He interprets the drowning as a baptism.
The film unfolds as a dreamlike tapestry of memory, blending fact, exaggeration, and metaphysical fantasy. alejandro jodorowsky la danza de la realidad