Blueberry - Desejo de Vingança

Here's a trick you can try right now. For an immediate sneak-preview of Blueberry's peyote-soaked finale, scrunch the ball of your palms firmly into your eye sockets. The ensuing geometric light show is but a fraction of what's on offer in this loose adaptation of Jean 'Moebius' Giraud's comic strip. In the 1870s, wild-child Mike Blueberry (Cassel) is adopted by Chiracahua Indians and, Carlos Castaneda-style, initiated into their shamanic rituals. Later, as a small-town sheriff, he encounters an old nemesis, the mysterious Wally Blount (Madsen), on the hunt for hidden Indian 'gold', climaxing in an all-out, psychedelic showdown. Suffice to say, the treasure Blount seeks isn't of the bankable variety (but it glimmers all the same). Blueberry's pretty unique; its closest cousin is probably that other 'existentialist Western' El Topo. And like Jodorowsky's movie, it's mesmerising at best, unfocused and pretentious at worst. There's some gorgeous cinematography here, while the astonishing CGI-rendered visions (featuring multi-tentacled hydras and other entheogenic plant spirits commonly reported from such trips) not only make 2001's 'Star Gate' sequence look like a walk in the park, but have also been authenticated and approved by real-life South American shamans. That's partly the problem: director Kounen spent a long time researching among the shamans, and Blueberry does betray the conviction of the newly converted at the narrative's expense; the cast (including Eddie Izzard cameoing as a Prussian mercenary) often seem slightly bemused themselves. A failure, then, but a noble and courageous one.

I've seen this at the Fantasia movie festival in Montreal. It's fairly slow-paced for a western, but then again this isn't just any western at all.

Nice, deep, trippy, beautiful movie. Incredible rendition of the shamanic/death/near-death experience, I was completely blown to bits and then carefully reconstructed numerous times. To me the movie made perfect sense, and I wasn't left with any questions regarding what went on or any part of the story, but I can understand how it could leave some people a bit confused and perplexed, to say the least. Leave your expectations at the door (or in another room if you are watching it on DVD) for an unforgettable experience!

Magic hallucinographic camera work brings you to a place of meaning. Strange and piercing, beautifully realized, moment to moment intensity, much more than its constituent parts. There is a serene grittiness to the ritual of film watching in this movie and I'm only 10 minutes into it. Most visionary films are impersonal, devoted to generalities and archetypes. This film is personal, almost quirky, yet relevant in its native originality. We see situations that are reminiscent of some distant calling yet brought to an immediate unfolding of growth and the danger of independent growth. One might be entertained by this motion picture if self comparison can be called entertainment.

This is an odd duck of a movie. I became interested since I'm a fan of Eddie Izzard who plays a mad Prussian lusting for gold. I knew it would be intriguing since its based on a Moebius comic strip, but I wasn't really expecting what I got.

The movie tells the story of Mike Blueberry, a US Marshall in the old west. As he lays "dying" we drift back through his life, stopping at about the point the crazed Prussian is getting everyone hot with gold fever and an old enemy returns to haunt him. Add to the mix shaman, bounty hunters, spirits, double crosses and peyote (for the crew as well as the cast) and you have a unique western.

Its a weird film with portents and visions criss crossing with hypnotic cinematography. This is a movie that looks great. There is a first rate cast, although I do have to say that I found some of the accents, Izzard's and star Vincent Cassel's a bit out of place.

Pretty much everything works except the screenplay which seems intent on being oblique for the hell of it. There is a heavy dose of Indian mysticism that seems to have been put there just to make things seem like they have a deep meaning (I think there was too much peyote behind the scenes). I'm not sure they do. The obliqueness and constant mystic reference slow the movie down to a crawl. After a while I stopped caring and started to look for the DVD remote. (Even worse is the fact that you have to pay attention to this movie or you're going to end up lost, so once I found the remote I had to back it up to see what I missed.) This is not a bad film, its just a rather dull and confused one. I'm sure in the right frame of mind this plays wonderfully, but I haven't determined what that is. I've rated it five out of ten because of the parts. The parts are interesting even if the whole is often a crashing bore. For fans of the cast, rabid western fans and those looking for head trip films only.

Jan Kounen's latest effort is an existentialist western with opulent visuals, threadbare characterization and a shamanistic undercurrent. It is really unique, but it really isn't brilliant in its uniqueness. The only film that it vaguely reminds me of is EL TOPO, but taken in full, it's still quite different from anything that's out there.

It's a yarn that is suffering an identity crisis - it really doesn't know what it wants to be, and no one element of it wins out in the end. It will not appeal to most western genre fans because even though it has the trappings (and cliches) of a western, it doesn't follow through with them and the characters are too one-note to be likeable or dislikeable. It fails as a revealing exploration of shamanism because it doesn't give the uninitiated any background.

BLUEBERRY has a great cast, but for the most part they're wasted (no pun intended - Tcheky Karyo, in particular) and some of the casting seems gimmicky, especially that of Ernest Borgnine. Even Cassel, who is usually compelling and tries hard, fails to engage. Juliette Lewis does hold interest in a sexy turn as the spirited girl (favorite line - after hitting the weasely character Prosit who stumbles into the saloon, interrupting her rendition of a folk tune, she blurts out "You ruined my song!") in love with the protagonist, and there are some nice full-frontal shots of her in the nude underwater towards the end - one of the film's assets.

Kounen seems to have made a conscious effort to make something really different from his previous film, the brilliantly over-the-top DOBERMANN, and he has succeeded, but the film itself is somewhat disappointing. It has its moments, though. Some sequences are very strong visual storytelling. And I'm sure some people will be annoyed by it, but I actually enjoyed the ponderous pace of the film.

The film is in English and a rare Native American language, with a light sprinkling of French. Subtitling on the non-English parts (there are some fairly extended sequences in the Native American language) would've really helped, I think. Some of the CGI visuals in the peyote trip sequences are beautiful and genuinely disturbing. In general, the parts where Blueberry is among the tribe are the most intriguing and seem to belong in a different film.

Perhaps this one gets better on a second viewing, or after a few hits on some psychotropic substances...