Death and the Compass

Death and the Compass is British director Alex Cox's second Mexican feature (the first was El Patrullero), made in 1996. Based on the short story La Muerte y La Brujula by Jorge Luis Borges, the film is in English, and stars Peter Boyle as Lonnrot the detective, Miguel Sandoval as Treviranus, his boss, and Christopher Eccleston as Red Scharlach/Zunz.

Related Topics:
Jorge Luis Borges - Peter Boyle - Miguel Sandoval - Christopher Eccleston

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The crew is the same as that of El Patrullero; the designer is Cecilia Montiel, the cameraman Miguel Garzon, the editor Carlos Puente. Stylistically it is quite different. The colours are impossibly bright, the locations monumental and exaggerated (particularly the police station - a maze of corridors built in Mexico City's main post office and the Convento de San Ildefonso, where Lonnrot meets his end).

Related Topics:
Cecilia Montiel - Mexico City

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Death and the Compass was originally a 55-minute drama made for Spanish TV/BBC in the quintocentenary year of the Spanish invasion of Latin America. The producer, Karl Braun, found further money from Japan to expand the film into a feature, but the film was not completed until four years after it was shot.

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