The Soul of a Man
The Soul of a Man (2003) Wim Wenders contribution to the documentary series The Blues tells the stories of three of his favourite blues artists: Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson, and J. B. Lenoir. He mixes documentary and fictional modes of narration to represent their biographies. Because there is no original film footage of Skip James and Blind Willie Johnson, Wenders reconstructed significant situations in their life with actors, adding these re-enactments to rare archive footage. The portion on J. B. Lenoir includes film footage made by a Scandinavian couple shortly before Lenoirs death that shown for the first time.
While Wenders gives his portraits a very personal and individual touch, the main narrative structure is the music of the blues. Wenders combines image and sound to create a specific audio-visual experience of the power of the blues in different periods of American history. To relate these historical performances to the current situation he intersperses versions of his favourite blues artists songs played by such contemporary musicians as Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Eagle Eye Cherry, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Cassandra Wilson, Los Lobos, and others.
Tobias Ebbrecht, Film and Television Academy ‘Konrad Wolf” mediacritique@web.de
