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Belizaire The Cajun
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by Fox Home Entertainment
Sales Rank: 4515
Price: $79.98
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This is one movie I watch over and over. I love that it covers a part of American history that most of us do not know, I love the language, the actors, the plot and the music by Michael Doucet.
Viewer Reviews
Belizaire The Cajun is a tiny treasure worth tracking down. It's a star vehicle for Armand Assante; he's most likely the only actor you'll know by name, although you will recognize character stalwarts Stephen McHattie - an excellent bad guy, and Will Patton. Don't blink for the appearance of Robert Duvall who, along with Robert Redford, helped greenlight the project.
Assante carries the film almost single-handedly, with some appealing support from Gail Youngs as his on and off girlfriend. He plays Belizaire Breaux, a medicine man in the rural backwoods - not to say bald cypress swamps - of mid-19th century Louisiana, deep in Cajun country. While the Cajun folk have more tenure in the area; their well to do landowner neighbors have more clout, including a Cajun sheriff in their pocket. A highly distasteful "ethnic cleansing" program begins, led by a team of vigilantes reminiscent of the Klan.
In addition to personal charisma, Belizaire's status as medicine man makes him the community's de facto leader, and they look to him for guidance. Rather than rallying the entire community, Belizaire attempts to bring peace through personal sacrifice. By the film's end he has epitomized everything you've ever heard about the sly, ingenious wit of Cajun people who live alongside the general community but are not truly a part of it and consequently must rely on their creativity and cunning.
The plot is spare, the scale is small, there is little evidence of production value to be seen. None of this detracts from Belizaire The Cajun. What this picture does extremely well is take you to another place and time convincingly, it drops you right on the lawn. The Cajun music is superb throughout; the depiction of common life is so vivid it reminds one of Brueghel's paintings.
How the Cajun people ended up in Louisiana to preserve their intriguing customs and marvelous patois is a fascinating chapter is American history. This movie doesn't just tell you about it; you can smell the gumbo. Assante was perfectly cast; he embodies the joie de vivre and sheer zest that characterize Cajun life.
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Belizaire The Cajun
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