I'd known of director Les Blank by reputation, but until last weekend had never actually seen one of his films. Having been on something of a late 60's / early 70's doc kick recently, binge watching Luis Malle's Phantom India and half-ironically watching Chariots of the Gods (the book frightened me when I read it while camping at Lake Wappapello as a kid), I felt ready to move on to something a little more..."wholesome" isn't the right word. Maybe "soulful". Something smaller scale. More focused. Something cutting a little bit closer to the bone.
I expected the music to be good. Mance Lipscomb is one of the most accomplished and recognizable blues guitarists America has ever produced. What I didn't expect were the almost Wendell Berry-esque themes of longing, change, and a beautiful simplicity being run over roughshod by what Lipscomb calls our "fast living". Lipscomb was born in the late 1800's. The film was made in 1970. A Well Spent Life is a time capsule within a time capsule. It's both a celebration of folk art and a record of what we lost in the ascendant fevered anti-culture of celebrity. Makes you want to sing along mockingly with Lipscomb at the banal figures who currently loom in our public consciousness: "You aint so big / you just tall, that's just about all"
2 Comments
9/26/2018 03:17:53 am
There had been many people who had lived their lives very happily and we should be getting more ideas from such people. They are surely having all the secrets of life which are good to make it better for us.
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Scott BeauchampWriter - Critic - Poet - Editor Archives
February 2021
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