re:mote voices

Title: Blueberry
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Juliette Lewis, Michael Madsen, Temuera Morrison, Ernest Borgnine, Djimon Hounsou, Eddie Izzard, Tchéky Karyo
Director: Jan Kounen

Moebius is probably the most well known French comic creator, unfortunately there is only a fraction of his output which is readily available in English. One of his most well known works was a Western, starring the eponymous Marshall Blueberry - it has been published in English, though I've never actually read the book. The film Blueberry is based on Moebius comic hero, though as the title sequence stresses it is based "loosely".

A French American young man gets into a fight with another man over a prostitute - during which the woman is killed, and the brothel is set on fire. The man, Mike Blueberry, rides away from the fire, injured he soon passes out in the desert. There he is found by an Indian shaman and his son, who drag him back to their home and nurse him back to health.

Years pass and the undisciplined young man has now grown up, taking the role of Marshall in the town bordering the Indian lands. Where he interacts with the local people and the tribe who saved his life. Legend has it that there is gold in the Indian's sacred mountains, which is attracting undesirable attention. Even worse is the sudden appearance of the man who Blueberry had his fight with, who he had believed died in the fire.

Blueberry is not a simple Western, for all that that is the core. There is a mysticism stemming from Blueberry's time spent with the Indian shamans, along with the beliefs that his nemesis has gained from his near death experience. This creates some stark contrasts. As a Western, the director/designers have gone for a particularly gritty feel - life is filthy, night time is pitch black in town, lit only by guttering torches. From this grime we go to the opposite extreme of elaborate computer graphics, as the two leads see into a universal scale reality - coding golden structures, writhing emotional insects. This builds up to the final clash where the film pretty much flips out, leaving the concept of reality behind.

The cast sees French actor Vincent Cassel take the lead role of Marshall Blueberry. Michael Madsen faces off against him as the films bad guy, in a fashion which is particularly stereotypical of Madsen. The token gesture love interest is provided by Juliette Lewis, daughter of the local town's big man - I've never been a particular fan of Lewis, and this role doesn't especially change that. British actor Eddie Izzard appears as a bad guy wannabe, ex-partner of Madsen, who wants to pip him to the post.

The result is something of a mixed bag, the performances are okay, though I think it is fair to say that the cast are pretty much playing performances that they have played before. The mysticism/weird aspects of the film, which make it more challenging and out there than just another Western, are the more interesting factor of the narrative - fuelled by trippy and multi-dimensional graphics.