MOVIE REVIEW: Spend It All
When Werner Herzog was making his film Fitzcarraldo, part of it involved moving a steam ship over a mountain in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Les Blank, the director, editor and cinematographer of Spend it All, was tasked with filming the “making of” documentary. Now, when they were about to move the boat for the first time, Herzog found Blank down by the river drinking beer. He said to him “Les, come film the boat. We’re about to move it. It’s a big event!” Les looked up at him and said “I’m not here to film events.”
That’s a really good way of describing Blank’s style: no great “events,” just a series of small moments, edited together to form a collage that conveys an idea rather than a central image or story. Everyone will walk away with a moment that sticks in their mind. For me it’s the image of some men shaving a dead pig for a barbecue. Everyone will have their own though because there are so many on offer, and they all contribute, in this case, to painting a portrait of the Cajuns.
The Cajuns are people in Southwest Louisiana descended from French Catholics from Nova Scotia. They were expelled after they refused to give up their Catholicism when the English took over. How they ended up in Louisiana from Nova Scotia isn’t clear to me. But Blank isn’t interested in telling you who the Cajuns are, though he does give a short history, he is interested in showing you the Cajuns, and as a result you learn less about the Cajuns than their ethos, how they view life and what they value.
One man says it best, and provides a title for the movie, when he says a Cajun “works hard, gets some money then spends it all having a good time.” Less is shown of the hard work, more of the good time, probably because the way these people have a good time looks really good on camera. Food is plentiful, made with fresh ingredients and music is omnipresent. It seems like everyone can either play an instrument or dance or both. And all this is shown by Blank in short little snippets: a pot cooking here, a dancing couple there. Nothing is held on, there are no characters here. The main character is the feeling of togetherness.
Over the course of the movie a portrait emerges of a hard working people that could have a lot to be sad about but instead celebrate the simple pleasures in life. It’s an ideal, to be sure, and just like any ideals the reality might not match up, but there’s the reality of the film and then there’s everything else. I’m not sure that Blank is interested in Reality. He’s interested in making a portrait, and just like any portrait, you exaggerate certain things to make the painting look better. That doesn’t make the portrait any less accurate, in a sense, because you’re showing how the subject ideally is, the best possible version of it, rather than how it is. Or maybe that kind of ideal is just what comes out when you film moments and not “events.”
5/5 This is a short one, about forty minutes, and it provides a look at a really fascinating group of people. DO NOT WATCH ON AN EMPTY STOMACH.