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!

From an artistic perspective, this is a very original and interesting blend of genres. The story is somewhat generic, but the way it is traversed is very unique.

For those not tripping-balls at the time of viewing, such as myself, this movie really suffers from pacing issues as well as a complete lack of editing. Watching this is similar to having a conversation with someone who's high out of their mind; while some of what they say may have some interesting perspectives, they ramble on, completely fascinated by what they're experiencing, while you're often waiting for them to get to any sort of point. This movie does have a few interesting points, but it is not consistently interesting as to how it leads you to them.

This film needed a lot more time in the editing room to be available to the general viewer, but then again, maybe that wasn't the target audience.

One of the trippiest and strangest westerns since 'El Topo', but besides visual exploration, don't expect too much coherence in story telling. The film goes deeper and deeper into the spiritual territories, but at the end leaves the viewer dissatisfied as by the end all the visual treats are just an hollow experiments and nothing more. The computer generated meditation and hallucination scenes are there just to be there for visual purpose. Although empty and somewhat confusing, they don't feel like some foreign bodies thrown in as these scenes beautifully melt in with the overall flow of the movie. The cinematography sometimes feel restless with its constant camera pans and rotations. We are never allowed to rest our eyes on steady shot. But the restless camera is supported with good editing so it doesn't start to distract too much.

Unconventional western with unconventional hero and villain with unconventional motives. Not as deep and spiritual as it aspires to be, but nonetheless entertaining to watch mostly thanks to its great cast and lively cinematography. The film that is definitely meant for the big screen to get the full enjoyment out if it.

Here's a trick you can try right now. For an immediate sneak-preview of Blueberry's peyote-soaked finale, scrunch the ball of your palms firmly into your eye sockets. The ensuing geometric light show is but a fraction of what's on offer in this loose adaptation of Jean 'Moebius' Giraud's comic strip. In the 1870s, wild-child Mike Blueberry (Cassel) is adopted by Chiracahua Indians and, Carlos Castaneda-style, initiated into their shamanic rituals. Later, as a small-town sheriff, he encounters an old nemesis, the mysterious Wally Blount (Madsen), on the hunt for hidden Indian 'gold', climaxing in an all-out, psychedelic showdown. Suffice to say, the treasure Blount seeks isn't of the bankable variety (but it glimmers all the same). Blueberry's pretty unique; its closest cousin is probably that other 'existentialist Western' El Topo. And like Jodorowsky's movie, it's mesmerising at best, unfocused and pretentious at worst. There's some gorgeous cinematography here, while the astonishing CGI-rendered visions (featuring multi-tentacled hydras and other entheogenic plant spirits commonly reported from such trips) not only make 2001's 'Star Gate' sequence look like a walk in the park, but have also been authenticated and approved by real-life South American shamans. That's partly the problem: director Kounen spent a long time researching among the shamans, and Blueberry does betray the conviction of the newly converted at the narrative's expense; the cast (including Eddie Izzard cameoing as a Prussian mercenary) often seem slightly bemused themselves. A failure, then, but a noble and courageous one.

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.