The Soul of a Man

This film is deeply disappointing. Not only that Wenders only displays a very limited musical spectrum of Blues, it is his subjective and personal interest in parts of the music he brings on film that make watching and listening absolutely boring. The only highlight of the movie is the interview of a Swedish couple who were befriended with J.B. Lenoir and show their private video footage as well as tell stories. Wenders's introduction of the filmic topic starts off quite interestingly - alluding to world's culture (or actually, American culture) traveling in space, but his limited looks on the theme as well as the neither funny nor utterly fascinating reproduction of stories from the 30s renders this movie as a mere sleeping aid. Yawn. I had expected more of him.

While all of the musicians that are featured here are great, their lives are not particularly interesting; at least not as far as I can tell from the film. I don't know if their lives were interesting because there is very little information here. It is mostly a mish-mash of performances and re-enactments filmed in the spirit of Hardcopy and Inside Edition (I hear that Wenders and O'Reilly are planning to collaborate on something) The documentary has some interesting performances, but you can get these from the soundtrack album. What's better, the versions on the soundtrack album aren't truncated like the ones in the film.

The documentary begins with setting the perspective to several light years. The voyager is traveling our milky-way with the sounds of our earthly lives, as a space monument for (possible?) extraterrestrials.

The documentary contains footage of Willy Dixen, Robert Johnson, Skip James and J.B. Lenoir. The footage of J.B. has never been published before. The narrative is from 'blind Willie' Dixon. However, it's done by an actor. The film shows the work of all these early blues men followed by covers and interpretations by musicians, such as Nick Cave and the bad Seeds among others.

The Death of J.B. Lenoir (John Mayall's song) is a striking event in the story. Lenoir got political engaged and is considered to be of the league of Martin Luther King and peers. His political interests can be found in the themes of his lyrics.

Blues is found to be 'THE' native music of America. Blues is the roots and the rest is the fruits.

The title 'Soul of a Man' is after a Willie Dixon song.

Wenders attempts something a little different, but the results are mixed. I appreciate that it was more interesting then Scorceses opening episode, but I had anticipated more. The pluses are its footage (mostly from the 1960s), and some of the reenactments. The minuses are that their never seems to be great depth to the stories being told, or much connection made to these three important musicians. Coupled with that are the mostly uninspired contemporary versions of their music, performed by some musical heavyweights like Bonnie Rait and Lou Reed. (Though their are a couple of exceptions.) Overall, a missed opportunity in my opinion, and just barely worth watching..

Less fancy than buenavistasocialclub, this documentary about blues music is well mastered and fascinating. It mainly presents two bluesmen of the twenties (blind willie Johnson and skip James)and one of the late fifties/sixties (JB Lenoir). To picture the high time of rooty blues, Wenders shot a reconstitution of the life into music that were in those times. It figures how words of blues came out in the atmosphere of a street, bar or studio, facing its audience. Introducing and concluding the film, an epic blow is given by the images of cosmic landscapes were a space engine has been launched to travel throughout the universe with relics and testimonies of human mind. Songs of Willie Johnson are in it! Although that it is pleasant to hear several artists still playing pieces of music that are now 'classics', it hides some interesting aspects under a decorative bunch of live performances. It would have been good to develop more about JB Lenoir which was a real songwriter, talking about the fight for constitutional rights of the black people, also denunciating the death of many brothers in Nam. Few archives pictures in the film show those matters (remember that lynch mobs were casual on saturday night in the south till the fifties). Maybe Wenders met some limits dealing with copyrights, but clearly his project was to give faces and pictures to a music that has been despised so long by showbusiness. What we can hear and see is that it's still alive.