Death and the Compass (1992/96)

[starlady]

Death and the Compass. Dir. Alex Cox, 1992/1996.

The BAM/PFA does a lot of cool movie retrospectives and whatnot that I never get around to seeing (even when I put them on my calendar!), but I managed to convince my roommate N to see this with me because it has Christopher Eccleston. I'd never actually heard of Alex Cox, but I really enjoyed this movie, both in itself as an adaptation of the Borges short story of the same name.

Cox was actually there at the screening (we watched his personal print, which unfortunately has some sound issues), and in the Q&A afterward I asked how he decided to adapt this story - he said he originally wanted to do "The Aleph," but the BBC didn't have the rights to it, so he wound up with this one. Some elements of "The Aleph" still linger in the movie, even so.

The 1992 version was shot for a TV miniseries event for the BBC and a Spanish television company, celebrating, as Cox put it, "the 500th anniversary of the burning of the library at Grenada." The original version is about 1/3 shorter; Cox expanded it by shooting scenes of Treviranus, post-retirement, explaining the events of the story in increasingly self-delusional, and inaccurate, fashion.

I don't know. I read all of Borges' short stories ten years ago, in high school, but I didn't particularly remember this one; I did really, really like the movie, which is simultaneously surreal, OTT, darkly humorous, and mordantly sarcastic and exaggerated. It was shot in Mexico City, and I think the Latin American setting definitely adds a certain something to the movie as a Borges adaptation. I also really liked the music, which was overpowering and bizarre, and the costume design, which puts the characters in some of the most brightly colored suits I've ever seen and makes, in context, total sense.

Comments

[rushthatspeaks]

... wait, if you hadn't heard of Alex Cox, does that mean you haven't seen the Christopher Eccleston/Eddie Izzard Revenger's Tragedy? IT IS AMAZING. YOU SHOULD SEE IT IMMEDIATELY. I think it is Eddie Izzard's best acting, and Christopher Eccleston has been waiting his entire life to shave his head, wear a black trenchcoat, carry a human skull and cackle madly at all stimuli. And the play has been revised so that Castiza has some goddamn agency.

I very much want to see Death and the Compass but it isn't terribly available.

[starlady]

The internet does not rate it highly, but if you like it, I will definitely track it down! They showed several of his other movies, all of which sounded cool (I want to see the one with Ed Harris about not!Nicaragua), but this was the only one I actually made it out to.

[rushthatspeaks]

The internet is sometimes bad at extremely weird movies, I think, and The Revenger's Tragedy a) keeps all the original language and b) is set in a dystopian future Liverpool. Something of a limited audience. But it is SO GOOD. It successfully makes the play into an actual tragedy. Which is hard. And it's full of amazing acting (Derek Jacobi as the Duke rocks his black lipstick) and hilariously dark comedy, and the gore isn't ironic but everyone treats it as though it is, which makes it genuinely disturbing. The only things I've seen which remotely resemble it are Derek Jarman's Jubilee and Edward II, which Alex Cox admits he was kind of crashing together when he made it.

I want to see all the Alex Cox but he can be so hard to find, and agreed on Ed Harris and not!Nicaragua.

[copracat]

Alex Cox made a bunch of movies that made a lot of sense when I was at university. I would highly recommend Repo Man, although you've probably seen a lot of films that drew on and improved its genius.

Straight To Hell is five kinds of brilliant crack. It's bad and good in equal measure and if you are a classic punk music kind of fan, the soundtrack is genius.