The legend of the holy devil Jerry Lee Lewis, the return to the cinema of Ethan Coen

• Retirement Ethan, the youngest of the Coen brothers, leaves the cinema

• Macbeth The Coen brothers are dead, long live Joel Coen

• Cannes directors' fortnight embraces the torrential debut of Elena López Riera with 'El agua'

It was Nietzsche who, in the midst of spilling, probably wrote that "write with blood and you will realize that blood is spirit."

Perhaps for this reason, or just the opposite, few directors are as bloodily Nietzschean as the

.

The evidence is there.

They debuted in a distant 1984 with

a film that was spirit from start to finish.

And so, one way or another, his filmography from

to

through

is there to bleed.

Now that they have decided to go their separate ways, the same thing.

Joel

, the eldest, chose just a year ago the insatiable bloodlust of Lady and Lord Macbeth to debut without his brother, his blood brother.

And

presented yesterday at the Cannes Festival in the Special Section the documentary

which is essentially that: blood on blood and, therefore, pure and free spirit of the bloodiest of musicians who has given the Rock And Roll.

Not surprisingly, his nickname, as he is known, is

, which, by the way, is what he called everyone as an uncle.

Ethan tells that his decision to leave the cinema was there.

The times were running before the pandemic and he suddenly realized that there was nothing left of all that illusion that made him dedicate himself to cinema.

“There comes a time when you experience cinema as just another job.

Productions are getting more and more complicated.

And then you see it clearly: if you have no need,

she declared recently.

The problem is that the planetary confinement arrived and, hand in hand with it, boredom and a friend with a project.

Musician

, a longtime collaborator of the brothers, offered both Ethan and his wife, editor Tricia Cooke, the chance to bring order to a vast amount of archival material.

And from there she emerged as Athena from the head of Zeus

Pure blood.

Pure spirit.

The film, as its inspiration T-Bone apparently suggested, begins with the song

at the performance of The Ed Sullivan Show and ends with

.

Without a single chance to breathe.

In between, everything.

Everything on fire in a frenzy of pure fever.

The documentary only lets Jerry Lee Lewis speak.

And with him everyone.

To tell it all.

And when all is said, the film does not avoid the most delicate and, therefore, bloody of issues.

Ethan Coen not only remembers the episode of the musician's wedding (the third of a total of seven) when he was 22 years old in 1957 with his second niece

but he literally leaves him bouncing throughout the film.

with echo.

For worse or for whatever, Lee Lewis defines himself there: in each of the gestures that destroy him, in each step towards the abyss, in his vocation towards suicide.

«They say that Jerry has been a father.

He has adopted his wife », jokes Bob Hope.

“Is it true that he was only 13 years old?” Asks the interviewer from an indefinite time back in the 60s

He responds to immediately make it clear that he loved her.

And hush.

It is the viewer who has to deal with the questions.

Not with the answers, because there aren't any.

"It's about putting the cool, magnetic artist side by side with the person with all his mistakes," says the director.

Otherwise, the film doesn't tell you what to think, it just gives you the tools to do it.

At the presentation of the film, microphone in hand, Ethan Coen was satisfied with having returned to Cannes and to the cinema that, in truth, he never left.

He also said that it has been a privilege to receive the electric shock from Jerry Lee Lewis.

And for the end he left the most important statement:

The documentary shares with the cinema of its author (a mediated author, since Joel is missing) his sense of irony, his lopsided gaze and his eternal capacity for wonder.

Also the rhythm, but it's not clear that it's the director's thing but the author of contemporary icons like

or, of course,

Of the legend of the burning piano followed by

spit in

however, not a word.

Legends should not be touched.

It is a documentary for laymen in the matter, but with infinite respect for the worshipers of a god-devil with, it is clear, 86 years of age and an entire eternity to fulfill.

"What is rock and roll?" they ask him over and over again.

The first few times he attentively attends to the interviewer, searches for clues in the black music he listened to as a child, stops to describe the sense of rhythm... until he gives up.

"Rock and roll is me," he declares.

He says that he never liked to follow anyone.

Neither go behind nor go ahead.

He remembers when he met Elvis.

And with Carl Perkins.

And with Johnny Cash.

He speaks through a thousand incarnations of himself, music plays and revives in each of his resurrections at the rate of

(or was it whisky?) and one stomach piercing after another.

She relearned to play the piano after a stroke.

Near the end, she is seen at a recent gospel recording.

Her hands like twisted ropes still resist.

There is blood.

Spirit remains.

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