A clue that something is a little off comes very near the beginning of Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, after a cartwheel through the early ‘70s highlights the U.S. campaign during the Vietnam War and the shameful resignation of President Richard Nixon. This supposedly sets the stage for why Bob Dylan, at the peak of his fame, gathered a band of friends and familiar faces to celebrate the Bicentennial with the eponymous rock-and-roll-and-performance-art tour. It makes sense, too, that, after such a downer period in recent history, a major music act would come together like this, featuring not only Dylan but Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell and Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg, the beat poet whose career stagnates until he gets the bright idea to refashion himself as a singer-songwriter.
One might now cotton on to what director Martin Scorsese is up to in the most fascinatingly self-reflexive film of his legendary career. As a renowned and notable documentarian of the rock music scene of this era with films like 1978’s The Last Waltz, 2005’s No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, and 2011’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Scorsese’s interests as a journalist here collide with his calling as mythmaker in a movie that combines archival footage of genuine happenings and complete fabrication with the help of his friends across various branches of the creative industrial complex. What is the most fascinating thing here, though, is how, after that newsreel of recent controversy, Dylan pops into frame as a talking head, admits outright that he remembers little about the Rolling Thunder Revue, and claims that it was “about nothing, really.”
Such an admission casts an amusing light on all that follows, because one has to wonder where and when the spark of interest in the story, the idea of telling it from Dylan’s perspective, and the assertion that Dylan has no real perspective on this topic became a unifying force instead of one that unraveled the entire project. For a long time, there has been an ongoing conversation regarding the relationship between ethics and documentary journalism – specifically, what obligation a filmmaker has with regard to the ethical considerations at all, as long as a creative vision is achieved. This movie reveals itself to be a vital part of this conversation in endlessly fascinating ways, with one more example being Sharon Stone’s presence, in which she regales us with stories of having been in charge of wardrobe during the event – despite having never met Dylan or any of the other interview subjects.
The point is clearly made by the end that neither Scorsese nor Dylan nor anyone else here is attempting to give a historical interpretation of the Rolling Thunder Revue. The idea is to give feeling to a fascinating chapter of history in the only way that makes sense for a project involving Dylan – by making farce of the fact that no one can clearly remember the reason for it or anything that happened during the event in question beyond the names and faces involved. When actor Michael Murphy shows up, fully in character as fictitious Michigan representative and Democratic Party nominee Jack Tanner from Robert Altman’s mockumentary series “Tanner ‘88,” to discuss Dylan’s pivotal role in the retrial and initial release of boxer and convict Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, all bets are basically off.
Yet somehow, the emotional justification for this semi-parody of a real-life event, which presumably had real-life implications in the careers of those involved and within the world of music itself, is fully and deeply felt through the sheer filmmaking acumen on display. Scorsese, along with editors Damian Rodriguez and David Tedeschi, is nearly in full-on experimental mode with his approach to mixing the Dylan’s performances, archival footage of the surrounding parties and appearances from celebrities and the running gaggle of talking heads telling (or inventing outright) stories of what happened there. The performances go on a bit, but for 142 minutes straight, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese is spine-tingling entertainment, as befuddling as it is beguiling, often hilarious, and sober in its satirical intentions. It also offers something entirely new from a legendary filmmaker, which is praise enough.
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