Death and the Compass
Death and the Compass: Comparing Ideas One of the oldest standards in Western literature as we know it today is that of the detective story. ... Jorge Luis Borges’ short story Death and the Compass, broken down to its simplest roots, is precisely that: an exciting little detective story. ... Two works in film have been produced, based on Borges’ Death and the Compass. ... The story of Death and the Compass examines a brilliant, if not eccentric, detective named Erik Lonnrot, and the circumstances and events leading up to his inevitable demise at the hands of a vengeful criminal called Red Scharlach. ... Directed by Paul Miller, the short film Spiderweb is based on Death and the Compass and for the most part, sticks very closely to its inspiration. ... There is no blood in the descriptive sense of the idea, only the death itself. ... Alex Cox did not, at first, want to do a film version of Death and the Compass. ... Eventually, he settled on Death and the Compass by the process of elimination. ... Among them was Death and the Compass. ... Cox’s desire to make the Aleph into a film is apparent in the final scene in his version of Death and the Compass, when Lonnrot, instead of passing on the idea of the straight line maze to Scharlach, conveys to him the idea of the Aleph, and his want to be lured there in the next life when Scharlach hunts him again. ... Compared to the short story, and Miller’s short film, Cox’s interpretation of Death and the Compass is strikingly visual. ... But at the center of both films, you come back to the exquisitely genuine short story written by Jorge Luis Borges, Death and the Compass.