Directed by Les Blank
In The Case Against Travel, Agnes Callard runs down a list of existential reasons why jetsetting to far-flung lands and experiencing other cultures is a fool’s errand (or pursuit in this case) and among those reasons is the impossibility of you, a foreigner, going someplace in search of its authenticity and being able to decide what’s authentic about a given food, custom, or ceremony. You, after all, don’t know this place, its people, or their ways.
It’s a fair point! Yet, the position discounts the value found in discovering an appreciation for our diverse human existence, and the variety of ways by which we create community and nurture the individual existence within it.
Spend It All, Les Blank’s deep plunge into the life of the Cajun people of western Louisiana, confirms both viewpoints. On one hand, it chronicles with emphatic presence a slice of life down in the bayou, summoning the smell of fresh crawfish and crab hoisted onto rickey sailboats, assailing your ears with local folk music, or bringing you into close contact with the faces of people who live there, presenting them unadorned and open.
On the other hand, its hands-off and observational approach leaves you just that: an observer. It forgoes much interrogation, questioning and exploration, staying on the sidelines (to be fair, it actually does get in the thick of things) but without knowing what was left on the cutting room floor, it’s a transparent eyeball that blinks very little.
An experience? For sure! A document of authenticity? Maybe!
It’s hard not to surrender to the rustic charm and the quirkiness of the Cajun people, who are descendants of French-speaking settlers who were driven out of their original settlements in Acadia, part of what’s now known as Nova Scotia. It’s a long tumble to the deep south of the United States, but the heritage remains strong along with the language.
Blank cuts together their work and play with an intensity and lust for life, and the opening sequence flies by with a pace and editing that wouldn’t seem too out of place on TikTok or any other ADHD-coded medium. It’s far from dusty anthropology. It does however eschew intrusion, captions, and hot takes, never interfering in the moment. And there’s an embarrassment of moments to take in.
Young boys drag-racing seething horses, their tiny frail bodies straddling beasts many times more powerful. A man performing some backwater dentistry with some pliers, spitting out the blood as the wind whistles out the newfound bloody gap. A man hoisting oyster shells into his little skip, it rocking with the added weight of a small mountain of this sought-after seafood delicacy that here feels as abundant as the murky water.
There’s a heady rush of life in Spend It All and pretty much all of it is set to the local folk music played by the Balfa Brothers, Marc Savoy, and Nathan Abshire, so much so it almost turns into a tourism music video. Any quiet moment left over is for talking heads, where a local expands a little on their history and society, or changes they’re going through. They’ve barely finished talking before the music kicks back in, and you’re once again taken onboard a fishing boat or thrust into a shindig. It feels as good as being there, but you’re also left wanting to know a little more about what really is here?
Mikkel Frederiksen 