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Blueberry
Verdict: French cult Western trip movie
Film - 2004 - 124 minutes
London - French DVD - June 05
Blueberry’s cult status comes from its quirkiness. But the oddest thing about Blueberry is that it uses predictable film-formats to convey ideas that are usually treated in free-form fantasias. It wraps the standard structure of a cowboy Western around extended, indulgent, rhapsodies portraying psychedelic drug trips.
It’s by French director Jan Kounen. Dubbing on the French track of the DVD was apparently done so as to appear to French-speakers that the actors were originally speaking in French. The choice of the Western as the format creates an off-centre feeling from the start. It’s now mostly a nostalgic format, and few contemporary film-makers carry it off without using a well-known actor like Clint Eastwood. There are no big names in Blueberry.
A Cajun boy goes out West after his parents die. He falls in love with a young prostitute. A gunman attacks the girl, the boy defends her, she’s shot in the head. The boy is saved from death in the desert by a hidden tribe of stone-age Indians (Chiricahua, a branch of the Apache). He lives with them, assimilates. Many years later, the boy becomes sheriff nearby. Bad-guys try to penetrate the Chiricahua’s sacred mountains to find treasure.
The plot is, for a stretch, wilfully difficult to follow. Cinematography reinforces the sense of disturbance: many close-up portraits, eerie low-angles, over-the-shoulder shots that give an ominous feel. There are complicated, hard-to-orchestrate, continuous pans; spectacular helicopter shots over panoramic landscapes that pick out isolated groups of horsemen as they pursue each other across wilderness; sumptuous close-ups of spiders.
Strangeness prepares the ground for unexpected resolutions of the questions the film raises in the beginning. Otherwise, Blueberry follows a classic trajectory. The Old West is a mythic world in which a heroic struggle of good v evil can be played out. Historical forces push the good guys and villains into conflict, towards ultimate confrontation and resolution via a rising body-count.
The hero has psychological burdens from the past, unresolved conflict and guilt. He can’t conquer his nemesis till he deals with what’s inside. Till then he can’t unite with a woman’s love.
There is a quest by the villains, using an ancient map to find treasure. Their greed leads them towards the plunder and destruction of a sacred natural sanctuary of a wise, vulnerable, primitive people. The hero must stop them.
It is the mysterious themes and motifs overlaying this plot that make Blueberry different. The central theme is the meeting of European and Native American cultures. This is emblemised throughout by the juxtaposition of the Christian symbol of the cross and the Indian symbol of the snake. Other totemic animals, such as eagles and spiders, appear repeatedly. Dialogue often returns to the sacredness of animal life, and the distinction (or otherwise) between animals and humans.
The mountains and treasure are a metaphor for the wisdom of the Indians, which is based on mystical journeys into the psyche with the aid of a psychedelic potion mixed from peyote cactus. The community of the tribe, their sacred mountains, the shamanistic vision-quests seem intended by the film as concentric perimeters of self-exploration, self-acceptance, and healing.
The director sets out to convey - as realistically as possible - the sights, sounds (and feeling) of a psychedelic trip. It succeeds - unlike most films that have tried this. Part of its success is due to the creative technology now available. But the viewer still has to accept that this mystical experience breaks down the hero’s barriers enough to take him out of his guilt. There’s a lot of vomiting while this happens.
The sadistic mass-murdering villain turns out also to be a wounded, sympathetic character. Unexpectedly, he is wise enough to know that his quest is not for gold, but for healing. When he’s found by the hero, the villain is in a sacred cave incapacitated by a power potion. The shaman forbids his killing in this state – it will solve nothing.
The issue is not the life or death of this man, but the cure of the sickness that turned him into a killer. And of the sickness that leads the hero to be flawed by his own obsession with vengeance; an obsession that turns out to be mistaken. There’s an unusual, and unexpected, resolution.
