With THE SOUL OF A MAN, Wim Wenders achieved a poetic homage to the music that shaped his life: The Blues. Wenders tells the life story of three of his Blues heroes: Skip James, J.B. Lenoir and Blind Wille Johnson, partly as a historical investigation, partly as a fictional staging. The music of these unfortunately forgotten great masters of the Blues is revived before our eyes through an extended fictional film sequence, rare archival footage, present-day documentary scenes and covers of their songs by musicians like Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams, Beck, Lou Reed, Eagle Eye Cherry, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Cassandra Wilson, Los Lobos, T Bone Burnett and other. “These songs meant the world to me” Wenders recounts. “I sensed there was more truth in them than in every book or every film one can read or see about America. I tried to tell a story about what touched me so deeply about these songs and these three unique voices of the Blues, rather than doing it with a documentary style.”
THE SOUL OF A MAN is part of a series of seven films by seven directors about THE BLUES. Made under the direction of Executive Producer Martin Scorsese, every one of these films is approaching the essence of the Blues in its own way and also investigates how deeply this music influenced people all over the world.
