Wednesday, September 28, 2005

No Direction Home - Bob Dylan


In brief, Martin Scorsese’s well-researched, over-hyped, flawed, too clean cut yet somewhat mesmerizing 210 minute documentary 'No Direction Home' on Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan is a portrait of the singer/songwriter from 1960-66. Known to be incredibly private about his life, it includes the first interview in many years and is an in-depth chronicle of the early 60’s folk music and its political references and Dylan’s meteoric rise from doing covers to stealing/writing his own lyrics. The insistence of his peers that Dylan was a ‘topical’ songwriter which he denied, the pathetic boos and cries of ‘Judas’ when Dylan electrified folk music at Newport in 65 with wild riffs from Mike Bloomfield ,while Pete Seeger threatened to axe the mic wire outraged by the ' sacriligious electrificaction of purist folk' , the great cue card scene of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues‘ filmed by Pennebaker, footage of Ginsberg young and erudite old, Lawrence Ferlinghetti at his typewriter with a Venice carnival mask, Joan Baez crooning away, misty eyed in Dylan adoration, fabulous black and whites stills of Dylan, the inane questions he suffered from journalists and the press, and many other facets , debately a lot missing issues, all meshed together in a brand new leopard-skin pillbox hat ….


For more serious reference and all is not what it seems, read the excellent, no punch pulled review by David Yaffe published in Slate.

Tag : No Direction Home - Bob Dylan