How does it feel?
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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Martin Scorsese's documentary on counter culture icon Bob Dylan is a brilliant exploration into the psyche of the life and times of an extraordinary man
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TAMBOURINE MAN The film traces Dylan's growth from folksie balladeer to electric rockstar
Martin Scorsese's films can be counted on to give one an intensely personal reading of the material at hand. Films like The Last Temptation of Christ, Gangs of New York and The Aviator all bear the unmistakeable Scorsese stamp. Like Stanley Kubrick, who takes a book and renders it almost unrecognisable with his unique brand of movie making, Scorsese takes an event, a person and shows it to the world using a special brand of Scorsese filters.
So in Last Temptation, you have a muscular Christ, an angry Christ, a warm and loving Christ and in the final count a markedly human Christ, that you feel for so strongly unlike the milk and water depictions that one would see in other religious films. Even the sprawling, brutal, bloody epic Gangs of New York, reveals the birth of a nation through Scorsese's eyes. And in Aviator through the story of Howard Hughes - his meteoric rise and his equally spectacular descent into madness and paranoia - one can feel the sure hand of a master.
Remarkable
When Scorsese decides to make a documentary on counter culture icon Bob Dylan within the time frame of 1960 to 66, the outcome is mind altering. Scorsese, who edited Woodstock (1970) the three-day festival of love peace and music and made The Last Waltz about the group known as The Band (they played with Dylan), has created an extraordinary portrait of a poet as a rock star.
Scorsese's voice is mute throughout. He tells his story through some amazingly candid interviews from Dylan himself as well as fellow musicians Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Maria Muldau, Al Kooper, folk music promoter Harold Leventhal, Dylan's mentor, Dave Van Ronk and beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
Though Scorsese apparently never met Dylan throughout the making of the documentary, Dylan granted access to his personal collection of film and audiotapes. The documentary at 210 minutes follows Dylan as he lands up in New York in 1960 to meet his idol Woodie Guthrie, to becoming the voice of the generation and being embraced by folk scene to turning into a electric rock star complete with dark glasses and ends with his motorcycle crash in 1965.
Dylan is supremely approachable as he says at the start of the film, "I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be. So maybe I am on my way home." He comes across as warm, witty and honest and accessible as he says: "The spokesman of a generation, the conscience of this, that and the other. That I could not relate to."
A disarming moment of honesty is when he talks of his then lover and collaborator Joan Baez' anger at not being invited on stage during the 1966 tour of Britain. He says: "You can't be wise and in love at the same time. I hope she would understand that now."
As he turned electric, the booing was unbelievable as Dylan comments: "I had no idea why they were booing. Whatever it was about it wasn't about anything they were hearing." While the folkies were disappointed, Dylan got himself the baggage of a rock star. Suddenly there were journalists asking him to pose with his sunglasses in his mouth, hysterical girls who stowed away in his car, crazy fans who wanted to shoot him - everyone wanted a piece of him.
And as the film progresses, there is Dylan looking frail, tired, a crumpled heap of a man rocking in his chair just wanting to go home. Like he says in an interview: "I'd just about had it though, I'd had it with the whole scene. And whether I knew it or didn't know it, I was, lookin' to quit for a while."
The film does not touch upon the drug abuse or of the effect of his music. But then it is Scorsese's view of the man and times not a historical perspective!
The documentary pays proper obeisance to the music and features among others the seminal Blowin' in the Wind, the hypnotic Desolation Row and an eight-minute version of the song that defined rock for generations to come Like a Rolling Stone.
This is a film to be watched for many reasons - for Dylan, his music, for Scorsese's storytelling craft and to learn about a generation when the possibilities were endless and a revolution was wrought through popular culture.
Enough praise cannot be heaped on Films for Freedom for screening the documentary that was quite the trip upon magic swirling ship, where senses are stripped and all the rest of it!
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