Blueberry: Reinventing the "Baguetti Western"

The 2004 French film “Blueberry” (released in the United States as “Renegade”) is a meditative tale of a weary lawman, Mike Blueberry (played by Vincent Cassel), who is struggling to maintain peace in a lawless town inhabited by villains and scoundrels. The film, vaguely based on the Moebius French comic series under the same name, is a visual tableau of hackneyed western imagery fused with psychedelic sequences.

Despite its tiresome pacing and obvious weak points in the narrative, the film’s director, Jan Kounen, received accolades for his experimental approach to the American western genre. Far from a popular film, audiences and critics tore apart the work, criticizing its exaggerated cinematography, largely inaccurate/stereotypical portrayals of Native Americans, clichéd thematic focus of “revenge and honor,” and of course, the inclusion of that giant flying lizard-demon…thing. Though deeply flawed in these regards, the film is acclaimed as a sensory piece, more of an “Acid Western” so to speak.

In the film’s climactic final sequence, the “good” and “bad guys” face-off in a most unexpected manner, not by shooting it out or warring for the good, but by instead laying in a cave and tripping out of their minds on a Peruvian drug called ayahuasca. This nine-minute psychedelic montage of intense visions and swirling patterns overlays Blueberry’s traumatic memories, effectively deconstructs the film’s vague narrative and reveals the disgraceful secret history of our “hero.” The sequence is at times jarring, overwhelming, and even boring. However, it exposes the true nature of the work: it is about images and ideas, senses and feelings that are raw and unrefined, the solitude and silent tortures of the repressed inner self and the deconstruction of identity. The seemingly trite and listless film transforms to deliver something shocking but intangible, haunting and beautiful.

It’s hard to predict if “Blueberry” will become a cult film such as Jodorowsky’s “El Topo," "Holy Mountain,"and Bird’s “Ravenous,” or if it will slip through culture's memory. As for now, it remains exceedingly obscure.