No Direction Home August 28, 2006
Posted by clydefro in : Music , trackback
With the new release of Bob Dylan’s first studio album in five years, I was inspired to finally watch Martin Scorsese’s nearly 3 1/2 hour documentary on the musical icon. No Direction Home
Originally shown on the PBS program “American Masters” in 2005, No Direction Home is divided into two parts with the first a mostly chronological account of Dylan’s early days as a folk musician in lower Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and the large influence Woody Guthrie had on him. After reading “Chronicles,” it was nice to see interviews here with some of the people Dylan talks about in the book such as Dave Van Ronk, another folk musician whom Dylan befriended and whose arrangement of “House of the Rising Sun” Dylan lifted for his first album. The second part is even more fascinating than the first and focuses on Dylan’s rising popularity and subsequent backlash in the folk community for using electric guitar in his live performances and studio recordings.
Particularly enjoyable, in addition to the frequent musical performances, are the interviews with Dylan himself and, later on in the film, Joan Baez, who took Dylan out on the road in the United States with her but was disappointed when he neglected to offer her the same luxury in the UK. Everything Dylan says is worth listening to, even if it’s difficult to know how sincere some of it is. We’ve so often seen the older Dylan’s face in magazines and on television, but rarely have we heard him speak aside from a recent “60 Minutes” interview where he had to share face time with interviewer Ed Bradley. The more direct approach Scorsese uses here is highly effective and these interviews alone would make the documentary worthwhile. Other interviewees provide a good basis for recognizing Dylan’s place in our cultural history and the archival interviews in which Dylan playfully evades the media’s questions are a nice treat.
If the documentary has a significant weakness, it’s that the viewer remains in the dark about the personal and private side of Bob Dylan. Dylan is certainly one of, if not, the most enigmatic entertainers of the 20th century. I can’t fault him for this, but it’s frustrating to watch a documentary of this magnitude and length and then understand its subject even less than before it started. While we frequently hear praise of Dylan’s genius and vision, there’s a conspicuous lack of any dissenting or opposing voice. I would have liked to have seen more adversarial discussion about the switch to electric guitar and a deeper exploration of the betrayal that the folk musicians and fans, the ones who had built Dylan up from his days at Cafe Wha?, felt. I didn’t want to hear from those who just had an axe to grind against him, but it would have been nice to see interviews with more of the people from Part 1 concerning the electric backlash.
Regardless of how much light is (or isn’t) shed on Dylan the man, Scorsese’s film manages to ably build on Dylan the myth. If you have any interest in Dylan’s music, watching No Direction Home is like watching highlight reels of your favorite sports team’s greatest triumphs. It’s great fun and compelling entertainment. I never realized how, for lack of a better word, “cool” Dylan was until I saw him at the 1966 concert depicted here. No longer looking like the pixieish young boy he was earlier in the decade, the bushy-haired and stylishly dressed Dylan on display in the UK was a mature musician so confident in his actions as to defiantly ignore the boos and cries of “Judas” before letting loose with his electric set of songs.
Despite any faults, though, No Direction Home is never less than engrossing. Part 2, in particular, is as captivating as any music documentary ever made and serves as a fascinating look at Dylan’s transformation into a rock star. I would imagine that Scorsese’s film will, deservedly, serve as the definitive documentary work on Bob Dylan and a superb entry point into the man’s music. Along with its unofficial companion piece, Dylan’s Chronicles book, these two works may be the closest we ever get to understanding the enigmatic musician.
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