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| Blueberry | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Jan Kounen |
| Written by | Gerard Brach Matt Alexander Jan Kounen |
| Starring | Vincent Cassel Juliette Lewis Michael Madsen Djimon Hounsou Eddie Izzard |
| Cinematography | Tetsuo Nagata |
| Edited by | Jennifer Augé Bénédicte Brunet Joël Jacovella |
| Music by | Jean-Jacques Hertz François Roy |
| Distributed by | UGC Fox Distribution |
Release date |
|
Running time | 124 minutes |
| Countries | France Mexico United Kingdom[1] |
| Languages | English German French Spanish |
| Budget | €34.5 million[2] |
| Box office | $5.7 million[3] |
Blueberry (French:Blueberry : L'expérience secrète) is a 2004 Frenchacid Western directed byJan Kounen. It is an adaptation of theFranco-Belgian comic book seriesBlueberry, illustrated byJean Giraud (better known as Moebius) and scripted byJean-Michel Charlier, but the film has little in common with the source material. The film starredVincent Cassel as the title character along withMichael Madsen,Juliette Lewis,Djimon Hounsou,Eddie Izzard,Temuera Morrison,Tchéky Karyo,Kestenbetsa, andErnest Borgnine. Although the film is a French production, the film is in English to match the story's setting in America'sWild West in the 1870s. Since the character of Blueberry remains obscure in the States, the film was released on DVD in America in November 2004 under the titleRenegade and marketed very much as a conventionalWestern.
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U.S. Marshal Mike Donovan (Vincent Cassel) (referred to as Broken Nose by the aboriginal tribe; unlike the comic his nickname is not Blueberry) has dark memories of the death of his first love. He keeps peace between the white settlers and the Native Americans who had temporarily adopted and taken care of him. The evil actions of Blount, a "white sorcerer" lead him to confront the villain in the Sacred Mountains, and, through shamanic rites involving anentheogenic brew, conquer his fears and uncover asuppressed memory he would much rather deny.
Jean Giraud, the famousFranco-Belgian comics creator and the illustrator of the originalBlueberry comics, appears in acameo role in the film, whileGeoffrey Lewis, who had appeared in severalspaghetti Westerns, and his daughterJuliette Lewis play a father and daughter in the movie.
The movie features several elaboratepsychedelic3D computer graphics sequences as a means of portraying Blueberry's shamanic experiences from his point of view.Jan Kounen, the director of the film, drew upon his extensive firsthand knowledge ofayahuasca rituals in order to design the visuals for these sequences, Kounen having undergone the ceremony at least a hundred times[4] withShipibo language speakers inPeru. An authentic Shipiboayahuasca guide appears in the film and performs a sacred chant. In the film, the exact nature of theentheogenic sacramental liquid which Blueberry (and his enemy, Blount) drink remains undisclosed. During the final visionary scene, however, there is a bowl of leaves shown accompanied by a twisting vine which is probably the ayahuasca vine,Banisteriopsis caapi. Historically,Native Americans living in theSouthwest United States, would have had no geographic access to ayahuasca.
Peyote is shown growing in the sacred areas throughout the film, and the buttons are prominently displayed at the end, although the viewer cannot be sure what Runi offers to the Marshal either time.
Blueberry was not a critical success in the Anglophone world and received mostly negative reviews. OnRotten Tomatoes it has a 22% rating based on reviews from 9 critics.[5]
Jamie Russell, of the BBC, felt the film was 'two parts bonkers to one part boring', and compared it toThe Missing by describing it as 'totally lost'.[6] In his review forCinopsis, Eric Van Cutsem found that the film greatly disappointed the expectations of the large audiences of the original comic, being largely unrelated in both story and character.[7] Raphaël Jullien, ofAbus de Cine, felt the film's greatest weakness was that it was partlyauteur experimentalism and partly genre western.[8]
Some reviewers found praise forBlueberry. Lisa Nesselson, writing forVariety was generally positive, noting the film demonstrated "one of the most mystical approaches to the Western this side ofEl Topo and felt that the hallucinogenic climax of the film 'may be the closest this generation will get to having its own variation on theStargate sequence in Kubrick's2001: A Space Odyssey". Nesselson also noted that the film 'functions better as a purely visual journey than as the revelatory spiritual crucible it aspires to be'.[9]
Blueberry has managed to build a reputation as a cult success and as a trip film.French language cult cinema website Film de Culte awarded the film 5-out-of-6, noting the unusual goal of theantagonist, 'the treasure sought by Wally Blount is not gold hidden in Indian mountains, but the spirit that emerges' through the quest of theprotagonist as 'a man in search of his identity, his roots, openness to the world and, why not, to love'. The cinematography byTetsuo Nagata was also referred to as 'sublime'.[10] Tripzine noted the film has 'the best, most accurate, most lovingly crafted shamanic rituals and psychedelic visuals ever created for home viewing', and praisedBlueberry's uniqueness among westerns for having a climax that revolved around shamanic rite rather than a gun battle.[11]