Movie Maker Magazine - Fall 2003 issue

The Soul of a German Man

Director Wim Wenders explores the legacy of three blues pioneers

The Irascible Ma Rainey once claimed that white folks just didn't understand where the blues came from. Moviemaker Wim Wenders, not only white, but also German, might kindly disagree. Growing up in a divided country, Wenders not only heard the blues, but identified with the messages of sadness and lament from an America deeply divided by racial strife. It was his introduction to the blues, followed by rock and roll, that propelled Wenders toward a career behind the camera.

An overview of Wenders' acclaimed and awardwinning films reveals that each one is intrinsically linked to the soundtrack. After the success of Buena Vista Social Club, where Wenders turned the spotlight on forgotten Cuban jazz musicians, it isn't surprising that this art house auteur has turned his lens on Mississippi and three obscure blues legends: Blind Willie Johnson, J.B. Lenoir and Skip James.

The Soul of a Man is Wenders' contribution to The Blues, a much larger documentary project helmed by Martin Scorsese, airing on PBS stations around the country this fall with a subsequent release on DVD. Wenders and six other directors, including Charles Burnett, Richard Pearce, Clint Eastwood, Marc Levin, Mike Figgis and Scorsese himself, put together films on various aspects of the blues. Wenders' production company, Road Movies, is one of the series' executive producers.

Wenders is known for taking chances with his films. He fictionalized the life of hard-boiled mystery writer Dashiell Hammett for Hammett, took his camera to the dusty backroads of the Lonestar State for the gutwrenching Paris, Texas and hit his stride with his classic meditation on angels, Wings of Desire. Most audaciously, he filmed the ultimate road movie, Until the End of the World, in 15 cities in eight countries on four continents. (He even smuggled star Solveig Dommartin into China with a tiny camera when he decided to bypass Beijing's red tape).

But it was Buena Vista Social Club that not only introduced Wenders to a whole new generation of film lovers, but brought the spotlight to Havana and a group of nearly-forgotten jazz musicians. In the documentary, Wenders followed blues guitarist Ry Cooder's pilgrimage to Cuba to record the music of Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Ruben Gozales, Omara Portuondo and other aging musicians who had been left in near poverty and obscurity under Fidel Castro's control. The film revived the careers of these musicians and saw them sell out concerts in Europe and New York's Carnegie Hall. He followed this with a documentary of Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris recording Nelson's acclaimed "Teatro" album.

A quick glance at the soundtracks to Wenders' films shows an eclectic taste for world music. Until the End of the World famously brought together Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Depeche Mode, U2, Neneh Cherry, Peter Gabriel, Nick Cave and others to accompany the around-the-world journey. Cooder's soulful guitar licks propelled both Paris, Texas and The End of Violence, while it was a story by Bono that turned into The Million Dollar Hotel with its alt-rock tunes by Daniel Lanois and U2.

But how did a German teenager find out about Blind Willie Johnson, Skip James and J.B. Lenoir? "I got to know blues music when I was 14 or 15 years old, mostly from the American Forces Network," Wenders says, recalling when American, British, French and Russian troops were still stationed in Germany after World War II. "I had a transistor radio and listened to it for hours at night, with the radio hidden under my pillow."

In the Blues and its offspring, rock and roll, Wenders found an "urgency and immediacy" lacking in other music. It was also this music that dispelled the idea of the American Dream. "It didn't speak of the glamour, the skyscrapers, the cars or pin-up girls. It showed the other side... the grittier one. And when you had the blues, there was nothing better to listen to. That music had a comfort and strength.'

Skip James, born in Bentonia, Mississippi in 1902, may be known to many in recent time as the man singing "Devil Got My Woman" in Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World. James had been rediscovered in 1964, but not a single photograph or piece of film could be found of him when he was at the height of his powers and making his most famous recordings in 1931. James died in 1969, jaded by what he called "the music racket:'

J.B. Lenoir, born in Monticello, Mississippi in 1929, recorded in Chicago in the 1940s with other greats like Muddy Waters and Memphis Minnie. He died in 1967 and is buried in his hometown at Salem Church Cemetery.

But it was the spirit of Blind Willie Johnson, who often used the blues to carry religious messages, that took control of the film that bears the name of one of his songs. Born sometime around the turn of the 20th century in Texas, Johnson recorded for only a few years from the late '20s to the early '30s, but was mainly a Baptist minister. Songs like "Motherless Children Have A Hard Time" and "Let Your Light Shine on Me' were some of his most popular. He died of pneumonia in 1947, sleeping in the ruins of his home that had burned to the ground.

During the planning stages of the film, Wenders discovered there was no archival footage of Blind Willie Johnson. "My blues heroes have been dead for 40 or 50 years, so that made the task of shooting a film about them very different;' he says. 'I don't even really know what Blind Willie Johnson looked like.

"The three didn't know each other; they were really from different generations altogether," he says. "But all three of them wrote all the songs themselves and they were great singers, songwriters and instrumentalists. They left important legacies and had a lasting influence on many musicians who learned from them." As with the Cuban musicians, Wenders wanted to lift these bluesmen from their obscurity "because they deserved so much better."
Wenders called upon musician Chris Thomas King (who portrayed another famous bluesman, Tommy Johnson, in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou) to portray Blind Willie in a series of vignettes filmed with an old handcrank camera that simulates those grainy, patinaed films from the '20s and '30s. (Wenders used this type of camera to dazzling effect in his film about the evolution of German cinematography, A Trick of the Light.)

Then Wenders made a decision that he says "saved my ass" - he made Blind Willie Johnson the narrator of the film (as voiced by Laurence Fishburne). Of course, this is a Wim Wenders film, so there had to be a twist on this conceit, as well: Johnson narrates the film from outer space. This is not as bizarre as it sounds, and not quite as bizarre as the little known piece of information Wenders dug up while researching Johnson. It turns out that a recording of Johnson's "Blind Was The Night" was one of three songs put aboard the first Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. That song, along with other data about Earth, was on the ship for the benefit of any aliens who might intercept it.
"Someone had incredible insight and wisdom to include Blind Willie on that recording,"Wenders says with amusement. "That gave me the idea to have Blind Willie narrate the film from the pretty unique perspective of somebody traveling through outer space. That device made the whole film fall into place, as weird as it might seem.'

OTHER JOURNEYS THAT MADE THE FILM FALL into place were the visits Wenders made to Mississippi to scout and shoot footage. Interpreting the Deep South that spawned the blues music he so reveres was a personal pilgrimage for the director. Wenders says he used his journey to learn more about the three bluesmen. "I knew their music so well, but didn't have much of a clue about how they lived. So to zig-zag all across Mississippi and go to Bentonia, Jackson, Monticello or Tunica, that was a real discovery for me. To spend time in the Delta-and to go way out of the way to visit Paris, Mississippi-all of that was a fabulous time and gave me a deeper understanding of the source these songs were coming from."
Wenders met descendants of the three bluesmen and shot numerous interviews, many of which wound up on the cutting room floor. Traveling through Mississippi, the film he wanted to make slowly took shape. "It was going to be more about the music and the essence of those songs than a biographical survey." Working on a small budget, Wenders' means of recreating the '20s and '30s was non-existent. So, he decided to film without "dressing" the shots. "I made a virtue of that default by consciously leaving everything as we found it in 2001 and 2002.'
Wenders says he found that Mississippi, which remains the poorest state in the union, has not changed much since the Great Depression, and there was no way to hide it. 'In fact, a lot of the places we came through were still heavily depressed and often reminded us more of third world locations than of the United States in the 21st century. That made some of the existential urgency of those songs by Skip from the '30s or by J.B. from the '60s even more poignant;" he adds.

Once location filming was complete, Wenders turned, to a group of his favorite singers and performers to interpret the songs of the bluesmen, to show the enduring legacy and love for the music. He brought in Lou Reed, T-Bone Burnett, Bonnie Raitt (whom he found in an old photo sitting at the feet of Skip James during a concert), Mississippi native Cassandra Wilson, the John Spencer Blues Explosion and Chris Thomas King to reinterpret the songs. Wenders let the musicians pick a tune and then filmed them over 18 months in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and London. 'All the musicians went out of their way to give a moving tribute to our three heroes. And some exceeded my expectations, by far."

Ultimately, Wenders' film has also exceeded his greatest expectations. Shown out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, The Soul Of A Man received rapturous reviews and praise from critics and filmgoers.

Not one to linger over a project once it's complete, Wenders is already in pre-production on his next film. He says he has done three documentaries in a row about music (four if you include the documentary he filmed on German rock band BAP), and now it was time to "go back to a fictional story." That story was written by Sam Shepard and has the working title Don't Come Knocking. "It's a great script. I've been waiting to make this film for quite some time"

Film fanatics are also eagerly awaiting the DVD release of the rarely seen five-hour director's cut of Until the End of the World. Wenders has screened this version at numerous festivals over the last decade and still marvels at the new cult status of the film, considered a flop upon its release in 1991. Perhaps this wonder and continued curiosity are what keeps Wenders behind the camera.

"I didn't dream of becoming a filmmaker," he says. "I wanted to be a painter and a poet and a writer and a musician. Only later did I understand that filmmaking was all of that, just rolled into one."

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