Review: Death and the Compass (1992/1995) - plus a big ol' digression inspired by a character's name
Death and the Compass (1992/1995)
Director: Alex Cox / Writer: Alex Cox, based on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges / CE’s role: Alonso Zunz, Ginzburg/Gryphius, Red Scharlach
This is EXACTLY the kind of movie I would have gone to see if I’d still been living in Large East Coast City when it came out, and I probably would have loved it just as much then as I do now. Some people think it’s a pretentious mess. I think it’s deliciously surreal, absurdly funny, visually gorgeous, and creatively staged.
Before you watch it, it’s worth reading the Jorge Luis Borges story it’s based on. It won’t help you make sense of the film, exactly, but it will point you toward some of the symbols you should be looking for. You can read it here.
Eccleston plays three different roles in this movie, which was only his second feature film. It’s great to see him as a young actor already displaying his range. He spends most of his on-screen time as the journalist Alonso Zunz, a character that Alex Cox created out of a nameless bit part in the short story. Borges describes him only as only as “a myope, an atheist, and very timid. “ CE gives him a posh accent, a slight stammer, and a nervous, hurried gait. He also plays the arch-villain Red Scharlach with campy theatricality and a touch of gender ambiguity. (If you hang around in Eccleston-friendly Tumblr circles, you may have seen pictures of Scharlach in his wonderful suit. Some people’s first reaction on seeing these pictures is to ask, “Is he in drag?”) CE’s third role is a mysterious gentleman named Ginzburg or Gryphius, who only appears briefly.
Borges’ short story is, well, short, so Cox has invented a lot of this film. Borges has his archetypical detective Lonnrot (played in the movie by Peter Boyle, a/k/a Raymond’s father in the sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond”) engage in mystical/intellectual cat-and-mouse games with Scharlach (though who is cat and who is mouse is not always clear). Cox adds a layer of satirical commentary about corrupt bureaucracy, reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”. Some examples: “City Police Detectives are reminded that the Torture Area is to be kept tidy at all times.” “Please remember that only officers killed by identifiable criminals who are subsequently tried and executed are eligible for the free coffins and cremation. I expect you to report any sandbagging bereaved families to me for disciplinary action.”
Cox also beefs up the role of Lonnrot’s boss, Commissioner Treviranus. Treviranus is played by Miguel Sandoval, whose long resume also includes appearances in a half a dozen of Cox’s other movies. The film is intercut with scenes of an aging Treviranus in his study, reminiscing about Lonnrot and acting increasingly deranged. “Death and the Compass” was originally a 55-minute feature; the Treviranus-looks-back scenes were shot later when funding became available to expand the film to 90 minutes (as was the flashback to the heist at the Used Money Repository, another Cox invention). These Old-Treviranus scenes are some of the funniest scenes in the film. The deadpan faux-documentary style reminds me of Peter Greenaway’s “The Falls”, another obscure film that I love. (Yes, I know my movie references are all out of date. I’m just getting back into movies after not watching any for almost a quarter-century, remember?)
Visually, it’s a beautiful film. Note the two scenes where Lonnrot and Zunz talk on the telephone. Each scene starts in Lonnrot’s apartment; as the phone rings and gets answered, Zunz appears in the background. This is *not* a post-production special effect. It happened like that on the film stock. Zunz was behind a scrim, and then the lights were brought up so that the scrim became transparent. Why don’t more directors do things like this? There’s a sort of organic, magical-looking quality to the effect, unlike the sterility of digital effects. Excuse me while I wax nostalgic for the analog age.
I’ll end by mentioning one complaint, which really has nothing to do with the movie, but when the subject comes up, I can’t resist the temptation to go on about it. You can stop reading here, unless you’re as big a nerd about language, literature, and folklore as I am.
_____________________
Here’s my peeve: the name “Lönnrot” does not rhyme with “Monroe”. Having read the story before watching the film, I had been saying the name in my head the correct way, like this, and it was jarring to hear it said “wrong”.
(Borges puts a lot of literary and historical references into his characters’ names, mainly, in my opinion, to show off how cultured and cosmopolitan he is. I'm sure other people get sent off in other directions by some of the names.)
I come from a Finnish-American family with literary pretensions. The name Elias Lönnrot was on the bookshelves and in the dinner-table conversation when I was a child. It’s actually a Swedish name; at the time (1800’s), educated upper-class Finns spoke Swedish, and many either had Swedish origins or had Swedified their names. Finnish was the language of ignorant, uncultured peasants. (The two are not even part of the same language family, by the way, although Finnish has a lot of Swedish loan words.)
Lönnrot set this notion on its head, though, by collecting the oral poetry of the peasants and publishing it, in a work that came to be known as the Kalevala. It’s what helped give Finnish-speaking Finns a sense that they had a culture, and that their language was worthy of literature. (He also Christianized the story up a bit, and added elements from other world mythologies; the original texts are more indigenously pagan.)
The Kalevala is worth reading. It’s got wizards and heroes and magic duels. It’s also got a very domestic side: it explains how to brew beer and throw a wedding feast. And it tells how young girls in those days often dreaded getting married, because it truly truly sucked to be the new daughter-in-law in your husband’s extended-family household. This is a good, metrically faithful translation, with pretty pictures.
If you’ve heard the Finnish band Värttinä, some of their songs have texts that Lönnrot collected. For true nerds, here is a Finnish guy talking in English about the Kalevala and then reading from it in Finnish (reading starts about 3:30). Here is a Brit reading a teeny bit in Finnish (with a passable accent) and then a bunch in English.
End of digression. If I go off about Finnish culture again in this blog, someone can politely take me aside and tell me to shut it.
_____________________
Back on topic: if you haven’t seen “Death and the Compass”, you should, especially if you like the oddball and off-the-wall. If you have seen it, tell me what you think.
ATBN review here. I worship ATBN.
Director: Alex Cox / Writer: Alex Cox, based on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges / CE’s role: Alonso Zunz, Ginzburg/Gryphius, Red Scharlach
This is EXACTLY the kind of movie I would have gone to see if I’d still been living in Large East Coast City when it came out, and I probably would have loved it just as much then as I do now. Some people think it’s a pretentious mess. I think it’s deliciously surreal, absurdly funny, visually gorgeous, and creatively staged.
Before you watch it, it’s worth reading the Jorge Luis Borges story it’s based on. It won’t help you make sense of the film, exactly, but it will point you toward some of the symbols you should be looking for. You can read it here.
Eccleston plays three different roles in this movie, which was only his second feature film. It’s great to see him as a young actor already displaying his range. He spends most of his on-screen time as the journalist Alonso Zunz, a character that Alex Cox created out of a nameless bit part in the short story. Borges describes him only as only as “a myope, an atheist, and very timid. “ CE gives him a posh accent, a slight stammer, and a nervous, hurried gait. He also plays the arch-villain Red Scharlach with campy theatricality and a touch of gender ambiguity. (If you hang around in Eccleston-friendly Tumblr circles, you may have seen pictures of Scharlach in his wonderful suit. Some people’s first reaction on seeing these pictures is to ask, “Is he in drag?”) CE’s third role is a mysterious gentleman named Ginzburg or Gryphius, who only appears briefly.
Borges’ short story is, well, short, so Cox has invented a lot of this film. Borges has his archetypical detective Lonnrot (played in the movie by Peter Boyle, a/k/a Raymond’s father in the sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond”) engage in mystical/intellectual cat-and-mouse games with Scharlach (though who is cat and who is mouse is not always clear). Cox adds a layer of satirical commentary about corrupt bureaucracy, reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”. Some examples: “City Police Detectives are reminded that the Torture Area is to be kept tidy at all times.” “Please remember that only officers killed by identifiable criminals who are subsequently tried and executed are eligible for the free coffins and cremation. I expect you to report any sandbagging bereaved families to me for disciplinary action.”
Cox also beefs up the role of Lonnrot’s boss, Commissioner Treviranus. Treviranus is played by Miguel Sandoval, whose long resume also includes appearances in a half a dozen of Cox’s other movies. The film is intercut with scenes of an aging Treviranus in his study, reminiscing about Lonnrot and acting increasingly deranged. “Death and the Compass” was originally a 55-minute feature; the Treviranus-looks-back scenes were shot later when funding became available to expand the film to 90 minutes (as was the flashback to the heist at the Used Money Repository, another Cox invention). These Old-Treviranus scenes are some of the funniest scenes in the film. The deadpan faux-documentary style reminds me of Peter Greenaway’s “The Falls”, another obscure film that I love. (Yes, I know my movie references are all out of date. I’m just getting back into movies after not watching any for almost a quarter-century, remember?)
Visually, it’s a beautiful film. Note the two scenes where Lonnrot and Zunz talk on the telephone. Each scene starts in Lonnrot’s apartment; as the phone rings and gets answered, Zunz appears in the background. This is *not* a post-production special effect. It happened like that on the film stock. Zunz was behind a scrim, and then the lights were brought up so that the scrim became transparent. Why don’t more directors do things like this? There’s a sort of organic, magical-looking quality to the effect, unlike the sterility of digital effects. Excuse me while I wax nostalgic for the analog age.
I’ll end by mentioning one complaint, which really has nothing to do with the movie, but when the subject comes up, I can’t resist the temptation to go on about it. You can stop reading here, unless you’re as big a nerd about language, literature, and folklore as I am.
_____________________
Here’s my peeve: the name “Lönnrot” does not rhyme with “Monroe”. Having read the story before watching the film, I had been saying the name in my head the correct way, like this, and it was jarring to hear it said “wrong”.
(Borges puts a lot of literary and historical references into his characters’ names, mainly, in my opinion, to show off how cultured and cosmopolitan he is. I'm sure other people get sent off in other directions by some of the names.)
I come from a Finnish-American family with literary pretensions. The name Elias Lönnrot was on the bookshelves and in the dinner-table conversation when I was a child. It’s actually a Swedish name; at the time (1800’s), educated upper-class Finns spoke Swedish, and many either had Swedish origins or had Swedified their names. Finnish was the language of ignorant, uncultured peasants. (The two are not even part of the same language family, by the way, although Finnish has a lot of Swedish loan words.)
Lönnrot set this notion on its head, though, by collecting the oral poetry of the peasants and publishing it, in a work that came to be known as the Kalevala. It’s what helped give Finnish-speaking Finns a sense that they had a culture, and that their language was worthy of literature. (He also Christianized the story up a bit, and added elements from other world mythologies; the original texts are more indigenously pagan.)
The Kalevala is worth reading. It’s got wizards and heroes and magic duels. It’s also got a very domestic side: it explains how to brew beer and throw a wedding feast. And it tells how young girls in those days often dreaded getting married, because it truly truly sucked to be the new daughter-in-law in your husband’s extended-family household. This is a good, metrically faithful translation, with pretty pictures.
If you’ve heard the Finnish band Värttinä, some of their songs have texts that Lönnrot collected. For true nerds, here is a Finnish guy talking in English about the Kalevala and then reading from it in Finnish (reading starts about 3:30). Here is a Brit reading a teeny bit in Finnish (with a passable accent) and then a bunch in English.
End of digression. If I go off about Finnish culture again in this blog, someone can politely take me aside and tell me to shut it.
_____________________
Back on topic: if you haven’t seen “Death and the Compass”, you should, especially if you like the oddball and off-the-wall. If you have seen it, tell me what you think.
ATBN review here. I worship ATBN.