I went to the Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center at Lincoln Center
today to see Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese. It was a much different documentary than D.A.
Pennebaker's Don’t Look Back which documented Dylan’s tour of England in 1965. Most of the film consisted of footage of the
1975 tour where Dylan and his entourage played before small audiences. Filmmaking is certainly an art as Scorsese
combined concert footage, dialog from 1975 and interviews that were done
recently of Dylan, Joan Baez, Allan Ginsberg (died in 1997), and other
performers. A film that showed only
concert footage would be boring, so Scorsese did a good job at combining
components. I didn’t see the point of
showing Richard Nixon who was out of office by 1975. Likewise, a scene showing the attempted
assassination of Gerald Ford was not necessary.
I did enjoy scenes with Jimmy Carter who quoted Dylan in some speeches.
Allan Ginsberg was certainly an active player in the Rolling
Thunder Revue, but I felt that he got too much screen time. I would much rather have seen more of Roger
McGuinn. My favorite scene was when
Roger introduced his own lyrics to Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. Dylan gave him a look that is indescribable. An article in Rolling
Stone states inaccuracies in the film, so we can’t expect perfection.
This film is a must for all diehard Dylan fans. The casual listener may not understand much
of the minutiae. Since I don’t have a
subscription to Netflix, I had to see it in the theater this week. I assume it will be eventually released as a
DVD.
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