A film about Bob Dylan, poet and musician, has been long overdue. It’s the story of a popular hero, a rebel, who so challenged the culture of the time that he helped to produce a counter culture that questioned the traditions of older age groups. Here was a modern Brothers Grimm who disturbed the dreams and nightmares of a generation. He became, probably, the finest song/poet of the post war era. He was also granted, in his later years, the Nobel for Literature. (He did not turn up).
I, “got into Dylan” in 1964 as soon as I heard, “It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why babe” I sat up and took notice. Pop music then was all I love you, you love me, she loves you, blah, blah. Then along comes this guy who understood how bloody awful it could be being 15/16 years old watching the then love of your life holding hands with someone else!
The movie
Anyway, the movie. The period feel is spot on all, over New York those wide rear winged cars are plentiful, they were called saloons, remember. Dylan arrives in New York aged 19 and finds his hero/mentor Woody Guthrie is hospitalised suffering with Huntingdon’s Chorea. Bob’s visit to the hospital is handled sensitively, he finds Pete Seeger present as well, not sure whether this is strictly accurate, but the scene does allow the viewer to catch a glimpse of where this complete unknown is coming from. Pete Seeger is played by Edward Norton and if there is a criticism to be made, perhaps a bit too saintly, but that’s a mere quibble, he is Pete Seeger.
Perhaps Timothy Chalamet has not quite nailed Dylan’s voice but Dylan himself has said that in his early recordings he was trying to adopt a nasal Guthrie twang so Chalamet is close enough. Chalamet is also convincing at portraying Dylan’s impatience with some of those around him, you get the impression that if you were not on the same page Bob may have been difficult to be around. This, perhaps, is shown with his relationship with Suze Rotolo (In the film her name has been changed to Sylvie Russo on Dylan’s insistence by all account, just recently he has stated she was the love of his life). She is played by Ellie Fanning with just a hint of Ophelia about her. Suze, of course, is the girl who appeared on the cover of Dylan’s Freewheelin’ album.
At this time Bob is trying to balance two women in his life, the other being Joan Baez. Monica Barbaro is Joan and she plays Joan like a lovesick teenager who knows, in her gut, this is not going to end well. Monica appeared in Top Gun Maverick but after this performance she can put that behind her. She is nigh on perfect, voice like a bell, and it must be said, if it were not for Joan there may not have been Dylan, she was hugely supportive of him. They were the folk coup, and Joan suspected that Dylan was looking more towards electrifying his material.
In 1963 Dylan arrived at the Newport Folk Festival as a folkie talking point he left a star at least in the US In 1965, at the same festival, he performs an afternoon folk set then in the evening, along with a Chicago Blues outfit Maggie’s Farm goes electric queue mayhem. Pete Seeger with an axe in his hand having to be restrained from cutting off the power, goes to show it is not only classical music lovers who can hold pretentious musical views.
Post chaos Dylan is seen explaining his actions to the folk purists, “I am not yours or anyone else’s, must a song be of love between brother and sister all over this land, is sadness only for the blues, do I have to keep singing Blowing in the Wind for the rest of my life?” As he explains this he is downright rude he really shakes Seeger, Baez and countless others to their cores and that, surely, is why we have poets and artists to really challenge beliefs and customs. Dylan is heir to the Romantics he should be counted among the Blakes, Shelleys and Tom Paines as a wordsmith and the Chopins and Schumanns at composing melody, and, as he said of his introduction of electric music at Newport, “It was honest man, it was honest”. Great movie.
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