Directed by:
Martin ScorseseCast:
Bob Dylan, Larry Sloman, Joan Baez, Patti Smith, Sam Shepard, James Gianopulos, David Mansfield, Joni Mitchell, Michael Murphy, Bob Neuwirth, T Bone Burnett (more)VOD (1)
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In 1975, in an America defined by both the self-mythologizing pomp of the upcoming bicentennial and ongoing sociopolitical turmoil, Bob Dylan and a band of troubadours—including luminaries such as Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, and Joni Mitchell—embarked on a now-legendary tour known as the Rolling Thunder Revue, a freewheeling variety show that was part traveling counterculture carnival, part spiritual pilgrimage. Director Martin Scorsese blends behind-the-scenes archival footage, interviews, and narrative mischief, with a magician’s sleight of hand, into a zeitgeist-defining cultural record that is as much a concert “documentary” as it is a slippery, chimerical investigation into memory, time, truth, and illusion. At the center of it all is the magnetic Dylan, a sphinxlike philosopher-poet singing, with electrifying conviction, to the soul of an anxious nation. (Criterion)
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Why is this documentary almost two and a half hours long? The answer is simple – less would be too little. Because the film needs some time to take the viewers into that strange atmosphere, to let them soak in the both relaxed yet tightly laced America of the seventies, to introduce them to the society of people who philosophize after their breakfast/lunch/dinner LSD and set off with Bob Dylan as performers or spectators on a tour that may never have existed (although it probably did) and may have been a success (although it probably wasn't). You watch it, you feel it was something unique, and you want to be there. That's the great magic of the Rolling Thunder Revue. There's a large cast of characters swirling around the charismatic Dylan in clown makeup, some of them are very quirky people experiencing very quirky stories, it's a blast at rehearsals and concerts, you feel from Dylan's work exactly the weight it had and still has, and well, in the end... in the end, it doesn't really matter if most of this is true, almost true, or pure fiction, because the point is that even what didn't happen could easily have happened in this Scorsese-Dylan world. I was expecting a slightly more traditional documentary, I got something more in the vein of Searching for Sugar Man. And I don't mind that in the slightest.
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