The Soul of a Man
2003 · 103 MIN · IMDB 7.4 · 972 VOTES · DIR. Wim Wenders
Overview
In "The Soul of A Man," director Wim Wenders looks at the dramatic tension in the blues between the sacred and the profane by exploring the music and lives of three of his favorite blues artists: Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir. Part history, part personal pilgrimage, the film tells the story of these lives in music through an extended fictional film sequence (recreations of '20s and '30s events - shot in silent-film, hand-crank style), rare archival footage, present-day documentary scenes and covers of their songs by contemporary musicians such as Shemekia Copeland, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Garland Jeffreys, Chris Thomas King, Cassandra Wilson, Nick Cave, Los Lobos, Eagle Eye Cherry, Vernon Reid, James "Blood" Ulmer, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Marc Ribot, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lucinda Williams and T-Bone Burnett.
Dialogue Timeline — 676 lines
A SAMPLE ACROSS THE RUNTIME — EVERY LINE IS SEARCHABLE
00:00:16 Once I had a pretty little girl
00:03:59 Among all these sounds from our planet...
00:08:32 And tell me to lean on him
00:11:12 Rival gangs...
00:13:45 Yonder lays
00:22:44 You get there Before I do
00:26:40 Than be that woman's man
00:30:33 Skip recorded 18 tracks...
00:33:13 Laying' up and down my breast
00:38:29 Skippy walked away from the blues and his music career.
00:42:19 We went to Bob Koester's record store...
00:45:22 I'm so glad, glad, glad Glad, glad
00:49:42 and right before we left we made another movie in black and white...
00:53:09 That's why...
00:57:18 Make them sing And laugh with joy
01:01:27 My dad will come and make you Leave me alone
01:04:59 Let me step on board
01:07:46 immediately say: "My God, who is that?
01:09:49 Now he gets ready to come on stage and I have some sense of history...
01:14:07 and his fingers are really flying. In other words, he has great dexterity.
01:19:27 And I was a poor man
01:28:02 From the mighty mountains of New York.
01:34:24 I want somebody
29:19:06 in Champagne, Illinois.