This is an adaption of the novel In the
Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke. It is a Dave
Robicheaux mystery - a series so far consisting of 22 books starting back
in 1987. They are beautifully written books - taking place deep in the Louisiana
Bayou - reflective, solemn, slow moving, extensively descriptive in which
the Bayou is a prominent character. The reader can sense the crushing humidity,
the sweat trickling down from your forehead, the smell of crawfish on the
grill, the uneasy racial relations that permeates everything, the class differences,
the thick accents, the swamps sucking you down, rain clouds always in the
distance - all underlying and integral to a murder that Robicheaux has to
get to the bottom of. Robicheaux is a tough cop in his pursuit of justice
no matter where it takes him and no matter if he has to break the rules to
get there. He carries with him a ghost, that of alcoholism that he has to
battle with every day. The film tracks the book pretty closely even using
much of Burke's dialogue but the ending feels rushed at the end.
This was directed by a well regarded French
director, Bertrand Tavernier, who previously had directed Coup de Torchon,
A Sunday in the Country, terrific documentary of French film and the jazz
film 'Round Midnight starring Dexter Gordon. The film was shot in the bayou
but Tavernier never quite captures the mood and milieu of his surroundings
- which a film is always handicapped compared to a book. That may be partly
because the American producers thought the film was too slow in developing
and so cut 15 minutes from it perhaps also cutting out the heart of the film.
The French version was Tavernier's version.
Robicheaux has two murders to contend with,
one a young prostitute mutilated and dumped in the bayou and the other an
uncovered skeleton of a murdered black man from decades before that Robicheaux
as a teenager had witnessed from a distance. He untangles lies, silence,
mobsters and more murders to uncover the present and the past that may be
connected - with a supernatural angle as he has dreamlike discussions with
Confederate General John Hood - that are alcoholic reverberations or fantasies
or perhaps not. This is played up much more in the book than in the film
and was probably among the cuts.
An excellent cast is here - Tommy Lee Jones
gives a very restrained performance as Robicheaux with words having to be
pulled out of him, John Goodman is a cruel-eyed gangster and pimp, Mary Steenburgen
is Robicheaux's wife, Levon Helm plays General Hood, the great bluesman Buddy
Guy plays Hogman, John Sayles is the director of a film being shot and Ned
Beatty is a local corrupt businessman. The film was never released theatrically
in the USA but Tavernier's full cut won awards in Europe.
