No Direction Home (Review)

“Once upon a time you dressed so fine

Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?

People call say 'beware doll, you're bound to fall'”

Even when Martin Scorsese makes a doco he does starts with a scene from about ⅔ into the film. This time he starts with seminal Bob Dylan song, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. The song is also where the film gets its title. So where does this movie start? Well, at the beginning. (trust me it’s not Goodfellas).

Dylan is an eccentric character but his childhood isn’t. We learn of Duluth, Minnesota, and his upbringing. He was in bands, exposed to new kinds of music, worked for his parents, went to college, etc. This wasn’t a boy who would lead a generation. He wasn’t the man most of us would come to know of between 65-66 yet but there was a resemblance.

Dylan never became a voice of the generation. The generation designated that upon him and there’s a big difference. It’s this discrepancy between Dylan, the public and the media that came to define his career. Dylan refuted this idea that he was the leader of the generation. It can’t be denied that he tapped into the zeitgeist of the early sixties. I could talk all I want but I will never get to the levels Dylan did without his devout followers.

I use devout to describe his followers because when he went electric those same people staged walkouts and infamously called Judas at his concerts. The same people who championed turned their backs on him.

No Direction Home is 200 minutes long and it isn’t always engaging but when you get to the part where Dylan either sells out/grows as an artist it’s fascinating. His fans obviously don’t know who this man was. He denied, at every opportunity, that he was a protest singer. The image of Dylan wasn’t fabricated and served on a platter like mop top and suits the way The Beatles were. This was a man whose music, while seldomly misinterpreted, awoke a different reaction than what Dylan was probably hoping for.

This is evident when he made when he went electric. He upset a lot of people because he wasn’t who they wanted him to be. In the end, we all know that this change pushed Dylan as an artist and as a human being. But, the listener hadn’t really witnessed a change within a musician’s discography before. The ones that felt uncomfortable were the ones most vocal about it. We later saw a shift in musical styles from everyone from The Beatles (Help! To Rubber Soul) to most recently Arctic Monkeys (AM to Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino). Like a controversial movie, he gained a strong reaction from everyone.

Dylan was and is an interesting figure and the people he surrounded himself with was no difference. Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Allen Ginsberg, Al Kooper, Bob Johnston, and The Hawks (later known as The Band). The interactions between Dylan and each of these individuals is unlike the rest.

The film’s low point is when his career is getting off. We’ve learned who his influenced by but his first record seemingly came about the same way everyone else’s did. A bit of luck, skill, and determination. It’s interesting to hear Dylan talk about his exposure to Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, etc. The way he talks about how it made him feel is, what I can assume, how plenty of Dylan fans feel too.

It’s hard to talk about the film technically as Scorsese puts more of an emphasis on the story than the craft, except for notable case. The interviews recorded for the film. The camera moves in odd ways while zooming in and out and the camera isn’t balanced either. An intimate feel is what they’re going for but it’s ultimately distracting.

There will be a time, possibly in my lifetime, that Dylan’s early music will enter the public domain but in a way it already is. The ‘Times They Are-A Changin’’s association with the protest movements of the 60s was never made by Dylan. It was the movement itself and its constant inclusion (and occasional parody) in the media.

Overall Score: 8/10

With this review, I wanted to talk about Dylan as a misinterpreted figure. For his birthday later in the week, I have made a 'Top 50 Bob Dylan Songs'. This review is also a kind of introduction to that list, but I will include what Dylan means to me a bit more in that article.

What are you thoughts on this doco?

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cinematographer: Mustapha Barat

Editor: David Tedeschi