Synopsis
A tribute to the Texas songster, Mance Lipscomb, considered by many to be the greatest guitarist of all time.
A Well Spent Life
1971 Directed by Les Blank, Skip Gerson
Directors
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Releases by Date
Theatrical limited
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USA
Releases by Country
USA
11 Mar 1971
- Theatrical limited Ann Arbor Film Festival
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Les Blank has that magic eye, that humanist heart, and that soulful ache, capturing music and wisdom and food and dancing from my home state of Texas, his camera a witness to a rural community rarely seen.
When Mance Lipscomb is laying a groove down he takes on the look of a satisfied cat, his eyes floating back in his head, guitar picking an act of purring.
Maybe it's because I was raised Southern Baptist, but that riverside baptism scene by the train tracks felt like one of the truest things I've ever seen in a movie.
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Saw this with The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins, and was struck by the unspoken racial tension that obviously pulses through both movies, which depict their subjects as two different sides of the same coin. Lightnin’ is an inveterate hell raiser with no bounds and no commitments, like something out of an early Cormac McCarthy novel. Mance is a steadfast monogamist, married to the same woman since he was 18, their behaviors now so ingrained they no longer even question them, to the point where they’ve been eating dinner separately for 50 years because of a single half-forgotten incident. Together they represent the dualistic nature of the blues just as neatly as the repeating barbed-wire / flower field imagery that…
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The Criterion Challenge 2023: Round 2
Les Blank and Skip Gerson's portrait of legendary blues musician Mance Lipscomb and his rural Texas town, A Well Spent Life paints a vividly humanistic picture of the songster. My first dive into Blank's extensive filmography, a legend in his own right, it had many of the insightful qualities I expected from a documentary of his. Music and culture being the main ones, with interspersed songs and scenes from around the area, of people, food, customs, and all sorts of daily doings. Less than an hour, this short tribute to one man may feel too brief, but in many ways, thanks to Blank and Gerson, it feels just right.
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'everybody wants to be somebody, want to be the same person, have the same feeling, eat the same food, dance the same dance, sing the same song. We get together, have fun together. We share together, we lay down and eat and sleep together. Because you can live in heaven here on earth, peaceful and quiet and nice to people. The way you live, the way you die. If you live good, you die good - in a peaceful way.'
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We mind that boss man, and when he said something whether it was wrong or right, we couldn’t dispute his word. Well, we was bound down. We couldn’t do nothin’ but just take it. We was scared to say anything whether it was wrong or right. ‘Cause we had men that ride over us and knock us down, shoot us down and do anything. We just had to put up with it.
Mance Lipscomb
A Well Spent Life
1970 -
Les Blank is at his best when he lets his subjects talk and talk a lot. I’m a lot less interested in his musical montages with random images that bridge the talking bits. Oftentimes the music is performed by the subjects which excuses them a little, but even then I’d much rather just watch the footage of them playing than look at a horse. Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers and Gap-Toothed Women are my two favorites so far for that reason, they’re just interview after interview after interview without any needless filler. With that said this has some of the most beautiful imagery of his filmography I've seen yet.
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"I'm not lonesome, one thing. 'Cause you can't get lonesome when you eat. So when you see me sittin' here by myself, why, I'm contented."
The whole thing with Mrs. Lipscomb having not sat at the dinner table with her husband to eat dinner for fifty years, because he ticked her off one night when he didn't show up for dinner, is both incredible, and incredibly sad.
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Mance in silhouette talking, while the sun is setting, is like snorting a line of pure cinema.
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Instead of canceling people we need to go back to shooting them in the leg
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Mance Lipscomb seems like a much nicer guy and mentally healthier than Lightnin' Hopkins. Lightnin's music is more original however. But Mance can sure play that guitar. He was married to the same woman for over 50 years, even though they had an unusual eating arrangment. He ate at the table and she sat on the sofa. Real life can be interesting.
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Une petite ferme tranquille, du poulet frit et une guitare. A Well Spent Life for sure.
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In 1967, when shooting The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins, Les Blank bumped into Mance Lipscomb almost by accident. He's in that film and participates with Lightnin' Hopkins on one song. To Les Blank, Lipscomb was so interesting that he had to get back to do a piece on him as well. And, as you now may have guessed, this became it.
Lipscomb is more or less Hopkins' opposite in every which way but the blues. He is more philosophical and speaks about love where Hopkins is coarse and talks about fucking. Well, he doesn't, but he probably would have given the chance.
Anyway, they were both great blues musicians.