Le Pardon

The inversion of the relationship between the subject and the object brings the reunion of Golgotha and Corrida: the toreros and the bulls change places, are crucified or are united in a deadly embrace. Their fight is defined by their total, devouring appropriation of each other. Corrida and Golgotha do not only invoke death celebrated as an orgy, but also rebirth. Christian heroes are transformed into heathen gods of seasonal recurrence. Mexico became a mystery in Eisenstein’s epic: a cosmogony of life and death. Here he understood art as a “transition from biological mortality to social immortality.”