Death and the Compass offered Cox the opportunity to adapt a piece of literature for the first time. The film is based on a short story (originally titled “La Muerte y la brújula”) by Jorge Luis Borges, first published in Sur in 1942, but not translated into English until 1954. This was the middle of a trilogy of detective stories Borges wrote, and was published precisely 100 years after “The Mystery of Marie Roget”, the middle of Edgar Allen Poe’s Auguste Dupin trilogy of stories. While Poe offers the detective frame for Borges’ story, the sense of enclosure in a labyrinth inside a nightmare comes from Franz Kafka.

Cox was offered the opportunity to make the film through the BBC, which asked if he would be interested in directing a version of “La Muerte y la brújula” as their “contribution to a ‘strand’ of Borges teleplays in connection with the 500th Anniversary of the Spanish Invasion of the New World” (17). The film currently in circulation was actually completed in two phases. The first phase was a film shot in 1992 as a 55-minute version, which was screened on Spanish television and on the BBC. Additional material was shot a year later to work toward a feature version. But a lack of post-production funds and some confusion over the theatrical feature rights put the completion of the feature version on hold.

Rights issues were a labyrinth unto themselves. The feature rights to the story were held by a producer in Spain, and Mexican- and Japanese-rights problems needed to be worked out before the feature version could be completed. Film negative elements were in Mexico, in London, in Los Angeles and Seattle. These issues were finally resolved, and the 96-minute film was completed and screened in Fall 1996. It is this version that was released on DVD.

The film works in a cabalistic process between sets of three and sets of four. There are three central characters at the centre of the story, and each has a colour code that works like a leitmotif and clues viewers into their psychic states. Treviranus (Miguel Sandoval), the police chief, is coded and dressed in yellow. He possesses the most direct relationship to the audience, whom he addresses directly. He speaks to the audience in a series of scenes set late in his life, as he looks back to the past to the point where the central action … the series of murders … takes place.

Treviranus tells the story of the last case of a master detective, Erik Lonnrot (Peter Boyle), who is coded and dressed in a bright blue. His nemesis is master criminal Red Scharlach, whose dresses in red.

These three primary characters/colours/forces are brought together as the result of a series of murders: first, of a Jewish scholar in a hotel, and then of a local political hack. Clues are left at the scenes that indicate to Lonnrot that the crimes are the work of a Jewish cabalistic cult, committing blood sacrifices. Treviranus wants the case closed quickly, wants to avoid the speculation (one might practically hear him call it “mumbo-jumbo”), but whether this means the murder is actually solved or not is a separate issue altogether.

Lonnrot, on the other hand, finds the most reasonable explanation to be “possible, but not interesting”. His interests are more æsthetic than practical, a fact that is not lost on Scharlach.

A fourth character appears through most of the film to be of great importance, named Alonso Zunz (Christopher Eccleston), a character who Cox took out of another Borges story and deposited here. But this fourth character is a deception, since Zunz turns out to be Red Scharlach himself.

The deceptive slip from three to four and back again happens in the murder sequence as well. After the second murder of a local politician, the third murder is committed but no body is found. Lonnrot’s dedication to the compass and the cabalistic cult explanation (three murders, in the North, East and West) leads him to the fourth compass point (the South) and the four-letter code-name of God (JHVH). But the third murder was a fake, a pose perpetrated by Zunz/Scharlach.

The eventual killing of Lonnrot at the hands of Scharlach becomes the third murder ... or perhaps, one could argue, a kind of analytic suicide committed by Lonnrot to the extent that he and Scharlach are doubles. Each is motivated by revenge for a past wrong. Lonnrot wants revenge for the murder of another detective (a blind detective called “Borges”) at the hands of Scharlach. At the same time, Scharlach is looking to avenge the killing of his brother at the hands of cops led by Lonnrot.

These actions take place in a Western urban environment that has clearly moved to a state of decadence. The police are routinely asked to clean up the torture room when they are done using it; Treviranus (whose name suggests the inhabitant of the Roman city of Trier (18)) has a scene where he appears before some investigative body, offering testimony that stonewalls the true circumstances of Lonnrot’s death. Treviranus is a police captain more concerned with the view from the police department’s new facility than in solving the murders that Lonnrot is investigating.

Borges story briefly mentions the notion of the Janus head, the face that looks both toward the past and to the future. Cox’s film demonstrates a playfully similar take on time. The outer frame story, narrated by Treviranus, is a narration from memos in the present. The story he tells, of Lonnrot and Scharlach, takes place in the past; the past is motivated by a point even further in the past where the grudges between Lonnrot and Scharlach find their origin.

But beyond the story, the style Cox chooses plays with time as well. The city of the film seems further removed into a future of oppressive police and crime-ridden streets. At the same time, the vibrant costuming (in yellow, red, and blue) and the synthesizer musical score evoke a late 1990s echo of the mid-1980s. In Cox’s vision, the future and the past surround us in the present, like the spirals of the labyrinth.

Finally, it is the character of the labyrinth that explains the situation of these incidents. In the same way that Kafka’s existential nightmares can transcend whatever present one might briefly associate with them, the trap set for Lonnrot by Scharlach is as much a rat’s maze that Lonnrot boldly moves into. He proceeds in the case without “backup”, only to be trapped as a result of his own analytical pursuits. Once he has realized his time is up – trapped on a dais at the centre of an enormous spiralling labyrinth – he discovers that his thoughts move forward in time to the next inevitable meeting between Scharlach and himself. He asks that, in their next meeting, that the labyrinth be a straight line. This would indicate the idea of the labyrinth of time, a line that waits for no individual, where the idea of not getting caught in one’s own circumlocutions might be possible.  

Original Title / Оригинальное название: Death and the Compass
Also Known As: Смерть и компас / La muerte y la brujula
Released in / Год выхода: 1992
Genre / Жанр: Drama, Crime, Thriller, Independent Film, Mysticism
Director / Режиссер: Alex Cox / Алекс Кокс
Writers / Сценарий: Alex Cox (writer), Jorge Luis Borges (story)
Cinematography by / Оператор: Miguel Garzón
Original Music by: Pray for Rain
Cast / В ролях: Peter Boyle, Miguel Sandoval, Christopher Eccleston, Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez, Pedro Armendáriz Jr., Alonso Echánove, Eduardo López Rojas, Alex Cox, Karl Braun, Gabriela Gurrola, Ariane Pellicer, Mario Iván Martínez, René Pereyra, Roberto Sosa, Bruno Bichir, María Fernanda García, Abel Woolrich, Martin LaSalle, Luis de Icaza, Claudio Brook, Leticia Alvarado, Cecilia Montiel, Manuela Loaeza, Regina Reyes, Sandrine Lacon, Cassandra, Marco Rosado, Jesús Hernández, Carlos Millet, Gerardo Moscoso, Genaro Aguirre, Álvaro Carcaño...