The Soul of a Man (2003)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Wim Wenders

Writer:

Wim Wenders (writer)

Release Date:

6 June 2003 (Italy)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography | History | Music

Plot Keywords:

Guitar | Blues Music | Musician | Delta Blues | Gospel Music

Awards:

Won Primetime Emmy. Another 1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Beck	...	Featured Performer
James Blood Ulmer	...	Featured Performer
Joy Brashears	...	Secretary
Keith B. Brown	...	Skip James
T-Bone Burnett	...	Featured Performer
Nick Cave	...	Featured Performer
Eagle Eye Cherry	...	Featured Performer
Shemekia Copeland	...	Featured Performer
Laurence Fishburne	...	Narrator
Garland Jeffreys	...	Featured Performer
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion	...	Featured Performer
Chris Thomas King	...	Blind Willie Johnson
J.B. Lenoir	...	Himself (archive footage)
Los Lobos	...	Featured Performer
John Mayall	...	Perfomer (archive footage)
Bonnie Raitt	...	Featured Performer
Lou Reed	...	Featured Performer
Vernon Reid	...	Featured Performer
Marc Ribot	...	Featured Performer
Shayne Tingle	...	Recording engineer
Lucinda Williams	...	Featured Performer
Cassandra Wilson	...	Featured Performer
Alvin Youngblood Hart	...	Featured Performer

Runtime:

Argentina:103 min (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente)

Country:

Germany | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Certification:

Australia:M | South Korea:All | Argentina:Atp | Germany:o.Al. | Netherlands:AL | Switzerland:7 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:7 (canton of Vaud)

Filming Locations:

Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Cappa Productions

Movie Connections:

Edited into "The Blues" (2003)

Soundtrack:

Dark Was The Night

here come the spirits!

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.