Scorsese strikes gold with Bob Dylan documentary
Dr. Jeffrey Sartin
A good documentary shows its real-life subject in an entertaining light. A great documentary has a narrative arc that offers something truly profound. By this criterion Martin Scorsese’s "No Direction Home," the story of Bob Dylan’s rise to superstardom, achieves greatness.
The outline of the story is simple enough. Scorsese’s film follows Dylan from a mundane middle-class upbringing in Hibbing, Minnesota to success as a young folk musician in New York; then to worldwide acclaim bordering on hero worship. Along the way, Dylan in interviews provides a caustic (and amusing) running commentary on events and personalities of the time.
Scorsese also interviewed dozens of Dylan contemporaries, including romantic companions Joan Baez and Suze Rotolo, and musical mentors Pete Seeger and Dave van Ronk. They provide a pivotal perspective for understanding how Robert Zimmerman, the shy Jewish merchant’s son, transformed himself into Bob Dylan, “the voice of his generation.” We hear engaging accounts of Dylan’s chutzpah, as he talked his way into a record contract with exaggerations and lies that would have embarrassed the average person. He arrived in Greenwich Village in 1961 barely able to play guitar and with a voice that was little more than a nasally whine. But within a year, he had established himself as the folk artist to see and hear in New York City.
Dylan caught the wave of the folk revival that was sweeping America, and soon his songs were being sung by everyone from Peter, Paul and Mary to Odetta to Sonny and Cher. Pushed in part by his relationships with activists such as Joan Baez and Allen Ginsburg, he became more and more involved in the civil rights struggle and other protest movements of the mid-1960s. Even those of us familiar with Dylan’s work over the years may be surprised to see the footage of him singing along with Joan Baez at the Washington Monument before Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
However, just as it seemed as if Dylan was evolving into the poet laureate of folkies, activists and intellectuals, indeed into a kind of Saint Bob, he changed direction. He grew his hair long, started wearing stylish boots, paisley suits and dark glasses, stopped singing asthmatic folk ballads and started playing loud rock’n’roll, accompanied by musicians of a wild and loud demeanor such as Michael Bloomfield and The Band. In doing so, he alienated many of his followers, who famously booed him at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 and during his London concerts in 1966. This did seem to rattle Dylan a bit, as contemporary footage reveals. He was also becoming more and more put off by the extreme sycophancy of his hard-core fans and by the hectoring attention of the press corps. Some of the most unintentionally humorous parts of the movie are the press conferences where clueless journalists ask inane questions. (In fact, in one exchange, Dylan gets a reporter to admit he had never actually listened to singer/songwriter’s music.)
The art of Scorsese’s approach is how he interweaves the story of Dylan’s rapid ascent and eventual retreat in 1966 with thoughtful interviews and electrifying concert footage. Dylan’s 1966 Royal Albert Hall performance provides a backbone for the whole movie, both starting and finishing the action on the screen. It is doubtful that anyone could fail to be captivated by Dylan’s talent and charisma in these performances.
In the end, Martin Scorsese tells the story, not of just a folk or rock musician, a poet or an entertainer, but (as the movie relates) a shaman and a shape-shifter. Zimmerman the man created Dylan the icon and, in 1966, took a step back to see just what god he hath wrought.
