‘BELIZAIRE THE CAJUN’ MIRED IN ITS OWN SWAMP

Sixteen years before the arrival of the Pilgrims, the French began settling in a region of Canada they called Acadia but were driven out in the 1750s by the British during the French and Indian Wars. Many settled in Louisiana’s bayous, where they became known as Cajuns.

“Belizaire the Cajun” (at the Cineplex and Goldwyn Pavilion) is set in 1859, a time when vigilantes were attempting to drive the Cajun descendants of those French settlers into exile once more.

But writer-director Glen Pitre, a Harvard-educated Cajun, never tells us why the Anglo majority, backed by plantation owners, has turned with such apparent suddenness against the Cajuns--and so bitterly and cruelly. Was it greed for Cajun land, hatred for their Catholic religion, just plain xenophobia or some combination of these? Or was it something else again? You’ll have to turn to the history books for answers because Pitre’s not telling.

The lack of context seriously undermines involvement in the film because we’re constantly asking ourselves why are the baddies so unrelentingly bad. How did this happen at a time when the French influence, which can be felt to this day, was flowering in not-so distant New Orleans?

As the plight of a small Cajun community worsens, a natural resistance leader emerges in the whimsical person of Belizaire (Armand Assante), a happy-go-lucky but wise and philosophical healer. While marshaling his people, he has his own predicament, to be sure: He’s crazy about this pretty, flirtatious Cajun woman (Gail Youngs), but unfortunately she’s the common-law wife of Will Patton, the handsome but callow scion of a nearby plantation family.

Naturally, Patton is a hotheaded vigilante leader, which again means there’s a problem of context. Why didn’t Belizaire pursue this woman before she was seduced by the enemy--and bore him three children? Or did he, and simply lost out? What holds Youngs to Patton, so clearly emerging as the deadly nemesis of her people and their entire way of life? What attracted them to each other in the first place? All these unanswered questions have the effect of making this woman seem a sweet, easygoing fool, eager to evade the truth.

“Belizaire the Cajun” was made with the assistance of Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, and Robert Duvall, who has a cameo as a local preacher, served as creative consultant. What’s more, Pitre had input from such established screenwriters as William Wittliff, Tom Rickman and Waldo Salt, all of whom are adept at clearly defining the circumstances of their stories. It’s amazing that Pitre’s script apparently posed no questions to them or Duvall.

Since Pitre’s people seem either short-tempered villains or simple folk, only Assante’s bearded, long-haired Belizaire emerges with much dimension. Assante gets into his Robin Hood-type role, and as a result the film does eventually get somewhere. But how much more effective he’d have been if less theatrical, and if his big scene at the film’s climactic moment didn’t drag on and on. It’s as if Pitre thought folkloric atmosphere were all. “Belizaire the Cajun” is as thick as gumbo or Spanish moss with atmosphere--all that lush bayou greenery, all those quaintly elegant Cajun customs, rituals and costumes, all that charming dance music with its unique fiddle style, those husky accents. “Belizaire the Cajun” (rated PG for considerable violence) may be terrific as ethnography, but it’s regional film making at its most self-indulgent.