A few month ago I was listening to Last.fm radio. I find a lot of music that way, new artists. I guess I was listening to something related to blues. Suddenly, there was this captivating, unusual voice. The artist's called Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945), and his music could be said to blend blues with gospel. He sings in a growly, yet sensitive & modulating, voice that one does not forget easily. Most (all?) of his songs contain religious themes. What a contrast to some other blues artists I listen to at the moment, from (about) the same period, women who sing about killing their husbands, boozing and having sex - they're great, too - check out Memphis Minnie or Ma Reiney or Lucille Bogan... I'm digressing. Even though the religious language used in Johnson's songs isn't exactly familiar ground to me, I feel completely at home in his music, in the spirit of the songs. This is, somehow, music unlike anything else I've heard before. The backing vocals of his wife adds yet another flavor to the sound.
Ry Cooder used Johnson's song "Dark was the night - cold was the ground" as a blueprint for his sountrack for Paris, Texas (1984/Wenders), which I watched tonight. Not only was the soundtrack marvellously well suited for the film, the visual style of the film blew me away (one of the visually most riveting films I've come across so far). Almost painfully sharp colors, often using fluorescent light to a great effect, function as the emotional backdrop of the film. The stark colors of the sky, in particular, were used brilliantly: the blue sky of midday, the heavy blue-red of deep night. I bet there would be no "No country for old men" (and tons of other indie-ish movies) without this, in my opinion, obvious source of cinematrographical inspiration.
I was happy to experience the elusive Harry Dean Stanton again. Mostly I've seen him in eerie minor roles in Lynch movies. And there's a lot of strangeness in this one, too: the first thing we see of Stanton is him walking alone, in the desert. After a while he is picked up by his brother, and it turns out he suffers from amnesia. He goes back with his brother to return to the life he once turned his back on. The first part of the film is great. After that some things start to bother me, issues not completely dissimilar from those I was disturbed by in Himmel über Berlin. Often, I find myself thinking that film makers should not go into those failed, tragic, oh-so-troubled romantic relationships at all, because the result is almost always the same schmaltz we've seen a million times (or more) before. OK, there are a few (quite many, actually) redeeming things that could be advocated for this movie in that respect, but I won't go into that. The only thing I want to say is that there are a few scenes that makes the film less believable than it could have been (a matter of taste, perhaps, also).
Himmel... had a lot of great moments, and so do this one, by which I was even more impressed. Great film!
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