Monday, May 5, 2025

Bob Dylan movies

Dont Look Back: unadulterated immersion in the aura of an icon in his prime. He's cocky, contrary, and confrontational, yet so charismatic. He's going electric and his whole entourage follows his curious electricity. This is probably the best document of his personality at peak popularity. It's just unstructured scenes from his tour.

No Direction Home: from what I remember, it's a pretty standard documentary, but it's long and inspired and infused with the vigor of its young subject.

Rolling Thunder: I never loved this album, so I was surprised Scorsese took it on, but now I see it. It's a great story, and the album has grown on me. The gang is back together, even if most of the personnel turned over and Joan no longer has the appeal she wishes she had. Bob is several eras advanced as of 1975, although even in the present-day interviews you can see the same smirk as Dont Look Back -- it's still Bob. This is a good documentary that savors the magic and mystique of Rolling Thunder, a classic yet bittersweet point in his history. His marriage is crumbling or has crumbled, he's about done for good being relevant in the mainstream, periods of transcendence and mediocrity have alternately come and gone... but Rolling Thunder had the energy. Not the energy of Dont Look Back, perhaps something sadder and weirder, but there was something there.

Live at Newport: just essential concert footage. Three years; three different Bobs. You could say 63-65 was the crux of it all, where you see a lifetime of artistic development accelerated. His greatest personas come and go in those three years... although I acknowledge my take on his personas is biased by these very movies.

I'm Not There: abstraction of his shapeshifting. I wish more movies took this abstracted approach. Its approach to its elusive subject is that change is the only constant. So it's a dramatized, fictionalized Bob Dylan story, but much more abstract and adventurous than the next one.

A Complete Unknown: modest realistic approach to his core years. Doesn't make much of a cinematic statement, just soberly depicts a classic cultural moment.

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