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No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

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No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005)

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) is a two-disc documentary by Martin Scorsese which covers Dylan’s career to 1966. You will not like this film if you insist on singing in tune, harmonica playing with a sense of musicality, or guitar playing with finesse. But if you are interested in the 60s music scene or if you are simply a Dylan fan, you’ll like this portrait. The strength of the documentary is that it is “loose,” meaning that it spends time creating the milieu in which Dylan thrived (it is 3 ½ hours long). The other strength is that the film does not have strident points of view that it is pushing, but it does have aspects of Dylan’s life and career that it brings to the fore. Here are some. Bob was really lost and alienated when he come out of Minnesota as a young man, and his fascination with crazy people was understandable. Although Dylan may have wanted for musical talent, he was very smart. As he said, “I had an agile mind.” Woody Guthrie’s music was, as oft reported, a huge influence because, as the current Dylan explains, it had the sound, it was radical, and it said something. The arts scene in Greenwich Village was fluid, and Dylan was markedly influenced by the poets. Once Dylan started writing his own songs, he was obsessive. He sat at the typewriter pounding out poems, songs, stories, anything. When Dylan went electric and moved away from overt protest songs, the audience hostility was amazing. Dylan’s “back up” band was the Butterfield Blues Band, and Al Kooper (organ) finally quit because he was afraid. Dylan compliments The Band for having the courage to become his new band. Dylan fundamentally objected to the stupidity of stardom, so, for example, we see him refusing to give autographs (“If you needed my autograph, I would give it to you.”) and turning reporters’ bone-head questions back on them. Sometimes this turns into bull-headed stupidity on Dylan’s part. The touring visibly took its toll. After 1966, Dylan did not tour for 8 years.

I knew a trememdous amount of this material before watching the documentary, and this reduced the chances of the film having a big impact on me. One of the best things to come out of the film came about when a record producer saw Maria Mulduar talking about Dylan, phoned her up and asked if she’d like to record a Dylan song, and got the response that she’d like to record an entire CD of Dylan’s love songs. Thus we have the superb “Heart of Mine” (2006), which tells me as much about Dylan as the documentary did.

Jim Bell

posted on Saturday, March 03, 2007 3:55 AM by JimBell

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