No Direction Home
Watched all 3-plus hours of Martin Scorcese's marvellous new Bob Dylan documentary, No Direction Home, on DVD last night. The highlights were many, but the sequences that remain the most unforgettably pathetic involve the reaction of the absurdly precious, 'pure' folk fans who continually booed and abused the new ('judas'-like) electric Dylan on his Mid 60s UK tour. The reaction to Dylan's new direction was so (bizarrely) intense that there were even rumours of Pete Seeger trying to cut the cables (with an axe) at the Newport Folk Festival (where Dylan had previously been hailed as a conquering hero) rather than let the audience continue to hear the sounds of Dylan's 'betrayal'!
The film's real strengths, however, lie in its admirable refusal to force a clear, set reading of the Dylan story, and its (undoubted) importance. Indeed, a major theme of the piece is the dilemma faced by an enigmatic, spontaneously-creative artist/performer who is, at the same time, a public figure continuously asked to 'explain' him/herself. True, Dylan often comes across as frustratingly 'inarticulate' and deliberately elusive, but that (as the movie suggests) only reiterates the fact that everything Dylan has to say, that's worth saying, can be found in the songs. The succession of cringe-worthy, and hilariously earnest, questions Dylan faces in the film's numerous press conferences, seem to be asked by the kind of people who wouldn't laugh at a particular joke, but who'd still have to know precisely what made it funny.
Dylan just 'was', and the songs just 'were': he obviously didn't feel the need (or the inclination) to defend/explain himself, or them. Equally, despite his love of Woody Guthrie and his flirtation with the 'civil rights' movement, he continually wriggled his way out of the political categories others tried to impose on him: communist, socialist, radical etc. A famous (or rather infamous) example of this obstinate streak was illustrated by the rather rambling (and defiant) speech he gave when accepting the 1963 'Tom Paine Award' from the 'National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee' (NECLC). As the Dylan of today suggests, he didn't want to be co-opted or 'officially' sanctioned by such an august body, and the speech (bizarre as it is) certainly signals an attempt to just 'be' and evade categorisation:
There's no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there's only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I'm trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics. They has got nothing to do with it. I'm thinking about the general people and when they get hurt.1
So while certain reviews of the film bemoan the fact that we don't get any closer to the 'real' Dylan, I think Scorcese's clear focus on Dylan's music and his artistry, proves far more refreshingly enlightening than any attempt to analyse Dylan in a prosaic, 'biopic-esque', 'what makes him tick?' manner. There is no rigidly clear narrative, no definitive 'meaning', no stupid answers to stupid questions…but that (to my mind) is exactly as it should be.
October 23, 2005
