Charles McPherson, the alto saxophonist, played the music eruptively, taking Charlie Parker's rhythms, the bursts of sound, and adding his own harmony.

James Taylor's Lord is a jocular, corporate executive; Don Henley's Faust is an eruptively surly punk, and Mr. Newman's devil is a lecherous sad sack.

There are hallucinatory sequences in Sergei Paradzhanov's 1964 film "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" when this eruptively colorful movie feels more like a folkloric tapestry sprung to life than a film about flesh-and-blood people.