A Poem Is a Naked Person

Whiskery and restless, grooving and grotesque, the documentarian Les Blank's long-suppressed film A Poem Is a Naked Person plays like your memories of some mad, stoned last-century summer.

Even Les Blank's most conventional work remains an elusive vision, punctuated by cultural insights that elude many filmmakers for their entire careers.

Russell is the magnetic epicentre of a much broader contemplation on the nature of being, creation and self-truth at a time of peace and love.

A time capsule capturing the flavor of early-'70s bohemian life in Oklahoma and Texas.

A Poem Is A Naked Person is littered with striking moments that fit casually into Blank’s study of fame and aspiration.

This film, commissioned by Mr. Russell and directed by Les Blank, is among other things a strange and gorgeous artifact of its moment. Happily indifferent to the conventions of its genre, it’s neither the record of a concert nor a talking-head-driven biography.

The movie makes something of a case for him, in that he is quite a good piano player, with absolute command of the blues, country and rock idioms, but there isn’t enough here to make someone a fan who isn’t already interested.