Many of Jorge Luis Borges's fictions are convoluted despite being very short, and most do not have much that is describable as a "plot." The ten-page 1942 story "Death and the Compass," however, is an exception. It is linear (it's also meta-linear, but I won't get into that) and has an almost conventional ruminative. intuitive detective solving three murders and seeking to prevent a fourth.

An adaptation by Alex Cox was unlikely to be so conventional. Cox's quirky 1984 film "Repo Man," with Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez playing car repossesors, delighted independent film aficionados. Cox is probably best known for "Sid and Nancy," though I was intrigued by his movie "Walker" with Ed Harris and the megalomaniac American who tried to become emperor of Central America after getting a start negotiating freight crossings for Cornelius Vanderbilt. Cox seemed to me to have an interesting vision of violence and corruption and Latin American politics. Plus adapting one of the most famous works of twentieth century American literature by the antipolitical Anglophile Argentine writer.

If one already knows the plot, as any moderately literate Latin American would, can be recognized amidst the highly saturated colors of the movie (they reminded me of Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy"), though an increasingly raving aged police commissioner named Treviranus (Miguel Sandoval) recalling the story obscures it, and there are also black-and-white flashbacks within the color flashbacks.

Does this sound incoherent? Well, the film is that. A 52-minute version of the main story was shot for airing on BBC in 1992 commemorating the 500th anniversary of Columbus blundering against "the New World." Four years later another half hour of footage was shot and sliced together. (I assume the ravings.)

The detective who refused to follow normal procedures of investigation is played by Peter Boyle. Boyle has a commanding presence and has portrayed impatience convincingly since his 1970 breakout performance in the title role of "Joe." However, a ruminative detective dabbling in metaphysics (kabbala herein) is not something he plays credibly. It's amazing to hear very high-falutin' surrealist love poetry (Paul Eluard's) coming out of the mouth of Eddie Constaintine's Lemme Caution in Godard's "Alphaville," though I was able to suspend disbelief for that. I was not able to do so for the intellectual gaming of Boyle's detective Lonroe. "Alphaville" also comes to mind because of the similarly distorted voice of the villain, the low-budget futuristic look of a movie shot in a recognizable metropolis (Mexico City here, Paris as Alphaville), and the light trench coat Lonroe and Caution both wore.

Lonroe wears very blue (true blue?) suits, commissioner Treviranus intensely (cowardly) yellow, and the villain is named Red and dressed accordingly. If Cox were really true to the spirit of Borges, he would have provided a fourth color: the sequence of murders forms an equilateral triangle, but the compass decrees a fourth point. There are only three primary colors, all of them used, but perhaps black or white? And there are only three time frames (Cox made the odd decision to distinguish the present in which Treviranus is recalling what happened from the story with frequent jump cuts—within a monologue that is increasingly insane.)

The extent of police corruption and collusion with the vice lords in the dystopian future metropolis is not clear to me on one viewing, and I'm not watching the movie again to try to decide whether Lonroe is tainted or set up or what.


Recommended:
No