Blueberry Review
By Keith Breese
Jan Kounen, the Dutch cause celebre responsible for the hyperactive cult film Dobermann, tackles the epic story of Blueberry with a careful, almost blissed out style - much to the dismay of fans of his earlier work. Blueberry is a meditative work, a somnambulist's ramble through western history and psychedelica. The film is slowly paced but crescendos in a special effects blowout, a literal celluloid peyote trip, which would make Alejandro Jodorowsky jump with joy. (That isn't a random aside, Blueberry is as close an homage to Jodorowsky's El Topo as a big budget western can get.)
Mike Blueberry (Vincent Cassel) is a weary lawman raised by Native Americans trying to keep the peace in the wild west of the 1870s. The town he oversees is populated by a motley bunch of scoundrels and caricatures: Rolling Bear (wheelchair bound Ernest Borgnine) and his son Billy the Idiot (Jan Kounen), McClure (a horribly coifed Colm Meaney), Mariah (Juliette Lewis) a regular Calamity Jane (Mariah's father, Sullivan, is played by Juliette Lewis' father Geoffrey Lewis), Prosis (Eddie Izzard) a geologist/con-man, Woodhead (Djimon Hounsou) Prosis' scalped African partner and Blount (Michael Madsen) a cold-hearted killer with a long and sordid history with our hero. Throw in a mysterious manuscript, a treasure, lots of mescaline, a Lovecraftian demon, flying lizards, and numerous journeys into the "spirit world," and Blueberry quickly moves from western to weird.
Upon its theatrical release last year, Blueberry was both lambasted by critics and jeered by audiences - the acting, the cinematography, the plot, the special effects, all ridiculed. And yet the film, viewed outside the world of Moebius' comics, is actually an arresting piece of cinema. Kounen is a provocateur; he enjoys pushing the envelope and pushing audiences. While Blueberry lacks the fireworks and fancy footwork of Dobermann, it is just as jarring and experimental a film. Kounen remakes the western; he sets up and then deconstructs the traditional western tropes of revenge and honor, expansion and settlement. Like Antonia Bird's brilliant Ravenous, Blueberry a western film that really isn't about the west at all - it's about ideas and images, indecipherable and unrefined. During the filming of Blueberry, Kounen had a transformation of sorts; he discovered shamanism and the Shipibo-Conibos culture of Peru. And this oozes into the film, pulsing at its core. Like Jodorowsky and Herzog before him, Kounen has discovered himself in the film he has made.
Blueberry is a film most people will absolutely detest. It's "bad art," they'll say. That's fine, for the rest of us there's always a haven in the appreciation of "bad art."
Aka Renegade.
Facts and Figures
Year: 2004
Run time: 13 mins
Budget: $53M
Production compaines: A.J.O.Z. Films, La petite Reine, TF1 Films Production, 120 Films, Crystalcreek Ltd., Ultra Films, TPS Star
Reviews
Contactmusic.com: 4 / 5
IMDB: 6.4 / 10
Cast & Crew
Director: Jan Kounen
Producer: Jean-Michel Lacor, Thomas Langmann, Ariel Zeitoun
Screenwriter: Gerard Brach, Jean-Michel Charlier, Jean Giraud, Matthieu La Naour, Louis Mellis, Cassidy Pope
Starring: Vincent Cassel as Mike Blueberry, Juliette Lewis as Maria Sullivan, Temuera Morrison as Runi, Ernest Borgnine as Rolling Star, Djimon Hounsou as Woodhead, Hugh O'Conor as Young Mike Blueberry, Michael Madsen as Wallace Sebastian Blount, Geoffrey Lewis as Greg Sullivan, Nichole Hiltz as Lola, Vahina Giocante as Madeleine, Tchéky Karyo as Uncle, Eddie Izzard as Prosit, Colm Meaney as Jimmy McClure, Dominique Bettenfeld as Toothless Man, Kateri Walker as Kateri, Kestenbetsa as Kheetseen, Jan Kounen as Billy, François Levantal as Pete the Barman, William Lightning as Young Runi, Antonio Monroy as Julio
Also starring: Tcheky Karyo, Jean-Michel Lacor, Thomas Langmann, Ariel Zeitoun, Gerard Brach, Jean-Michel Charlier, Jean Giraud, Matthieu La Naour, Louis Mellis, Cassidy Pope