I saw the Bob Dylan movie as soon as I could, on Christmas Eve, 2024.
I was surprised to find it playing in my hometown movie theater.
It was far from a packed house. Besides us, one family and a couple of solo movie goers. I was with my brother, his partner, and my cousins.
I have been aware of this movie since pre-production (Jan 2020).
The Bob Dylan reddit page had been posting about it for years.
I am a member of this forum and sometimes it can be difficult to reconcile my admiration for Dylan and the insufferable nature of many of his fans.
The Mangold film reminded me of the duality between the human and the mythos. The legend and the person. The songwriter and the song.
Dylan loves blurring the line between fact and fiction and his most ardent fans love to decipher him.
"A Complete Unknown" made me wonder, what do you lose when you make yourself indecipherable?
"People make up their past," Bob tells his partner "Sylvie" in the film, "they remember what they want and they forget the rest."
In Mangold's film, Dylan comes off as a bit of a pretentious asshole, because he was one. Dylan was a New York yuppie and maybe that's why Chalamet's impression seems so believable.
A scene that has stayed with me is when Bob is watching Johnny Cash on tv. The announcer is talking about Cash's "transition" from country to rock. Chalamet's Dylan mumbles some bitter comment about labels ruining things.
No artist wants to be put inside a box.
I resonated with the Dylan character as he talks to Joan after going electric at Newport (a classic scene in the Dylan zeitgeist).
Monica Barbaro, who portrays Baez, suggests that Dylan should be happy. After all, he had won.
"What exactly did I win Joan?"
Like any truly great artist, Dylan invites you to draw your own conclusions.
The songs reflect the listener in the same way that this film reflects your own perceptions of who Bob is or was supposed to be.
The version of myself that I see in Dylan is the artist that wants to be known, but fears being seen. Sometimes sacrificing the comfortable for the unknown, the community for the solitude of 'success.'
Opmerkingen