Death and the Compass

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Death and the Compass
Christopher Eccleston in Death and the Compass
Directed by	Alex Cox
Produced by	Karl Braun Lorenzo O'Brien Executive producer Katsumi Ishikuma Associate producer Alejandra Liceaga Co-executive producer Miguel Camacho Diego López Rivera
Written by	Jorge Luis Borges Alex Cox
Starring	Peter Boyle Miguel Sandoval Christopher Eccleston
Music by	Pray for Rain
Cinematography	Miguel Garzón
Editing by	Carlos Puente
Release date(s)	August 5 1992
Running time	96 min
Country
Language	English
Budget	$3,500,000 (estimated)
IMDb profile

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 Brújula" ("Death and the Compass") 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.

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).

Death and the Compass was originally a 55-minute drama made for Spanish TV/BBC in 1992, the quintocentenary year of the Spanish conquest of what is today 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.

The synthetic 80's "period" soundtrack was composed by Dan Wool and Pray for Rain. The making of the soundtrack is discussed thoroughly in a conversation between Cox and Wool on the DVD release.