Nothin’ But a Good Man Feelin’ Bad
Although the ABC and SBS broadcast some PBS productions, its usually long after they’ve played in the U.S. For Martin Scorsese’s Blues, it will probably be a bit longer, as they’re getting a theatrical release here first (for 6, anyway, Clint Eastwood having denied permission for his to play in theatres). M. & I have been to see two of them over the weekend, Scorsese’s Feel Like Going Home and Wim Wenders’ Soul of a Man. We’ll make a priority of going to Red White and Blues, Mike Figgis’ entry, but will probably wait for the others on video or broadcast, mostly because this is prime movie season for us, what with all the U.S. summer blockbuster releases getting worldwide play (yea! Spideman vs. Doctor Octopus) and the Sydney Film Festival, which will include, again, for us, waiting for some to come out in general release (this one’s my pick: Zatoichi, with Takeshi Kitano).

Of the two Blues films, I prefer Scorsese’s, although so far I’ve been left with strangely mixed feelings coming out from both: I want more detail or more music. The films as documentaries don’t have the seamlessness of, for example, Ken Burns’ Jazz production, nor do they have the musicality of, say, Standing in the Shadows of Motown. When they start down the documentary path, they swerve suddenly into the music, and just when you’re starting to groove on the tunes, they track back into a story, and usually without affording the kind of narrative segue you’d expect. M.’s take on Wenders’ entry was apropos of both, I think, that the narratives skipped over necessary points of connection that would have made sense of the information being presented. Corey Harris, in Feel Like Going Home goes from the Delta to the hills of Mississippi to Africa, and while you come away knowing why you miss a little of the how. Wenders moves from Blind Willie Johnson to Skip James to J. B. Lenoir but never connects the three except by having Lawrence Fishburn speak in Johnson’s voice as the narrator and telling us that James and Lenoir died within three years of each other. Nevertheless, I have to recommend these films, because they document a musical form that gets all too easily lost in rock ‘n’ roll and country music. And like Willie Dixon said, “the blues are the roots, everything else is the fruits.”