Blueberry: L'expérience secrète

This is a visual diamond. The frame composition of this movie is amazing! every frame is like a well planed and composed photograph. The music is also wonderful and supports each scene in a remarkable way. BUT, the digital effects gets out of hand and takes over the movie. they should be supporting it, not drown it. The hallucination scenes are very complex and confusing and should have been simplified to bring the story forward. (why do the directors get so carried away by digital effects? they of all, should know that it is the story and the "flow" of the movie that is important, not the amount of digital effects you can put in it!) However, this movie is definitely worth watching, but don't expect a conventional action western!

First I would like to make it clear that you cannot appreciate this movie if you are, for some reason, anti-shamanism or anti-hallucinogenics -as in, regarding those as a meaningless joke- because that's a big part of the movie. On the other hand if you're interested in shamanism, DO make sure you see this.

Most of the movie is visually very well done and it is, really, storytelling. there is only a light amount of action, though when it does go off, you can recognize Kounen's style, like for instance his habit of zooming in really close on strange but cool facial expressions from his actors etc.

I never read the comic. And seeing this free from expectation, I found it pretty good. not as attention grabbing as Dobermann (that goes with the type of movie) but definitely worth a watch.

Don't listen to the negative comments (especially those making fun of the effects, those people seem to be obeying a deeply rooted feeling that hallucinogenics are somehow evil) and make an opinion for yourself. I give it an 8.

Jan Kounen's latest effort is an existentialist western with opulent visuals, threadbare characterization and a shamanistic undercurrent. It is really unique, but it really isn't brilliant in its uniqueness. The only film that it vaguely reminds me of is EL TOPO, but taken in full, it's still quite different from anything that's out there.

It's a yarn that is suffering an identity crisis - it really doesn't know what it wants to be, and no one element of it wins out in the end. It will not appeal to most western genre fans because even though it has the trappings (and cliches) of a western, it doesn't follow through with them and the characters are too one-note to be likeable or dislikeable. It fails as a revealing exploration of shamanism because it doesn't give the uninitiated any background.

BLUEBERRY has a great cast, but for the most part they're wasted (no pun intended - Tcheky Karyo, in particular) and some of the casting seems gimmicky, especially that of Ernest Borgnine. Even Cassel, who is usually compelling and tries hard, fails to engage. Juliette Lewis does hold interest in a sexy turn as the spirited girl (favorite line - after hitting the weasely character Prosit who stumbles into the saloon, interrupting her rendition of a folk tune, she blurts out "You ruined my song!") in love with the protagonist, and there are some nice full-frontal shots of her in the nude underwater towards the end - one of the film's assets.

Kounen seems to have made a conscious effort to make something really different from his previous film, the brilliantly over-the-top DOBERMANN, and he has succeeded, but the film itself is somewhat disappointing. It has its moments, though. Some sequences are very strong visual storytelling. And I'm sure some people will be annoyed by it, but I actually enjoyed the ponderous pace of the film.

The film is in English and a rare Native American language, with a light sprinkling of French. Subtitling on the non-English parts (there are some fairly extended sequences in the Native American language) would've really helped, I think. Some of the CGI visuals in the peyote trip sequences are beautiful and genuinely disturbing. In general, the parts where Blueberry is among the tribe are the most intriguing and seem to belong in a different film.

Perhaps this one gets better on a second viewing, or after a few hits on some psychotropic substances...

Magic hallucinographic camera work brings you to a place of meaning. Strange and piercing, beautifully realized, moment to moment intensity, much more than its constituent parts. There is a serene grittiness to the ritual of film watching in this movie and I'm only 10 minutes into it. Most visionary films are impersonal, devoted to generalities and archetypes. This film is personal, almost quirky, yet relevant in its native originality. We see situations that are reminiscent of some distant calling yet brought to an immediate unfolding of growth and the danger of independent growth. One might be entertained by this motion picture if self comparison can be called entertainment.

I've read all the series of the Blueberry cartoons in fact I still have the whole series on my bookshelf. I first was disappointed with the fact that this Blueberry character doesn't look any near the Blueberry Cartoon figure. But the spirit of the cartoons can be found back in this movie. I think they did a better job trying to catch some of the Cartoon spirit rather than trying to copy the original Cartoons which is very difficult anyway because even in cartoons you still have that personal touch of fantasy which always gets destroyed by making a movie of some Novel or in this case, Cartoon. Very nice to see a more "Holistic" approach towards the "Cowboy-Indian" theme. It's a good thing to realize that this native Americans had a much more healthier attitude to nature than we do and we should learn from them now we know that we already destroyed some of it. When I think about American Indians I also have that holistic feeling about them so for me this Movie adds up to that. See the movie yourself when you are in a chill mood and you will certainly appreciate it.

P.S. Nice to finally know how Tsi Nah-Pha (Broken Nose)is pronounced.