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 So
you understand my thinking, consider this a small warning that I am
seriously ambivalent about the film I am to describe. Called “No
Direction Home: Bob Dylan,” directed by Martin Scorsese, it ran for
four hours on PBS. If you missed it, it will surely play again.
According to all the publicity, I thought I was ready for four hours
of Bob Dylan. After all, he is an authentic American
songwriter-performer important in the annals of folk and pop music.
When someone talks too much or something runs too long, there is an
old adage in television that says, “you are telling me more than I
want to know.” Bob Dylan is not to everyone’s taste. Never was.
Never will be. After slogging through this film, he deserves better
and by that, I mean, he should have a small, modest film about who
he is and his life. Instead of something compact and revealing, we
get a big, sprawling mess of a film by none other than Martin
Scorsese. It is a film filled with more background than I knew
existed about Bob Dylan, his world and the world around him. It
tries to make the case that Dylan, through his music and his
presence, made a difference in the world. Perhaps some think that
way, but not everyone. Make no mistake. Perspective is good. Context
is important. However, this film has more context than imaginable.
Because of that, I lost sight of Dylan the man.
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Martin Scorsese |
I usually do not understand a word of Bob Dylan says when he sings,
especially in the last twenty years. However, to Scorcese’s credit,
and probably because Dylan wanted us to hear him clearly, I
understood every word he uttered in his interview in the film. But
it was never enough. I wanted to hear more from Dylan himself. There
should have been more of his turns of phrase. His natural poetic
expression was at times negated by the director’s need to hear
someone else spout off about Dylan in an attempt to define the man
and the artist, as if Dylan’s sense of himself was not good enough
or legitimate.
Dylan is clever, searching, insouciant, at times befuddled with his
fame and how the outside world views him. Is he just another writer?
No. Is he a poet? Yes. Is he a communicator and a voice of several
of the generations he lived through? Brilliant? Touchy? Yes. He
loved and hated fame. Still does. In his mind, he is conflicted
about his place in American culture. I can understand that and
accept how he feels. If we heard more Dylan I believe we would have
learned more, rather than depending on friends, detractors, former
lovers and the like who commented on him in the film. I thought the
director’s vision got in the way of allowing Dylan to speak for
himself.
There are more clips of Dylan and the era under discussion than I
thought ever existed. The researchers had a wonderful time, with the
help of Dylan’s personal archive, finding many magical clips. We
have Dylan singing everywhere, especially as a young man. We see
Dylan in many different situations, many of which are encyclopedic,
but not very revealing. I commend the work of the researchers. There
is a major problem, though. It feels as if Scorsese used everything
his team discovered. After watching and watching and watching – I
thought at times the film would never end – I concluded that there
was too much material. It made me believe that Martin Scorsese was
his own worst editor. Call him an enemy to the inner story. Because
of this, he could not trim his film to a reasonable length. He gave
equal weight to all his material, and, for that, art suffered in the
name of context.
I also feel that Scorsese was working several different approaches.
One said I am smart and clever because of what I dug up about Dylan.
The other said, I want to share with you my industriousness and give
you the benefit of everything – of everything – I learned. All this
is important, of course, but watching seemingly every performance
from beginning to end, limited my understanding of Dylan and, yes,
the times in which he lived. Was it necessary to show news clips
from each era of his life, to show every news conference he held,
and to hear interviews on the fly with adoring fans?
Historical documentaries, which this is, should never play tricks on
the audience. These documentaries exist to tell us stories about
life as lived either by another person or a community. They should
not be a reflection of the artist, read director, who made the film.
Many historical documentaries are boring. They adhere to form beyond
anything else. Historical films are similar to historical paintings
from many centuries ago, created usually in one large canvas, to
tell a tale told many times. They conform to what the story is –
familiarity being the key -- and what the artist thinks we should
know, in addition, often depending on his patron.
I am aware that the documentary film is at a crossroad. It cannot
remain stodgy. Some films need help. I am not against some tricks
and devices to hold the viewer. However, reenactments for instance,
mostly do not work. Thankfully they are nowhere in this film. This
does not mean because material is available we should pile it on the
viewer much like when football linemen gang tackle a hapless
quarterback. I am against too much manipulation that tends to lose
the audience. I do not want to be part of a carnival ride for the
sake of the ride itself, which is what the Dylan film is. I would
rather a ride that gives me edited information about the subject,
information that is unadorned. Scorsese dazzles us with his frequent
use of Dylan’s appearances anywhere and everywhere. Perhaps for a
Dylan fan this works. If you are not a fanatic, the use is
questionable.
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Bob Dylan in 1963. Photo © Jim Marshall |
Often coming out of an interview with barely a hint of where we are
headed next, we find ourselves enmeshed in a Dylan appearance,
sometimes one never seen before outside his archive. The song
appears out of nowhere. I know using music in this way has a
purpose. But it should not take so much time before we discover its
purpose. That happens after the number plays to its end. Then up
pops a talking head, often famous in the world of music, which
sometimes comments on the music and usually says something about
Dylan the man. The comment is sometimes self-serving because it is
as much about the interviewee as about Dylan. Too much time passes
between the end of many of the songs and the start of the
explanatory comment or simple commentary. This overload of sometimes
extraneous comment makes it more difficult to understand and follow
Dylan’s life and his influence on musicians and fans. Maybe this
works in narrative films. It does not always work here. It fails in
a documentary. Is this a film about Dylan’s music and Dylan the man
or is this a film about Martin Scorsese and his view of Dylan?
If the film is about Dylan the musician and Dylan the man, the
division is far from equal. I know that many will say you cannot
separate the two. True. But I want to know more about the man to
better understand his music. I wanted to watch him when he spoke. I
wanted to make a judgment about him while listening to him and
watching him. Did he always tell the truth? There is are hints
throughout the film that Dylan did not always get his own story
right, even though his story is familiar to anyone who cares and
follows his life.
Some interviews looked old, such as the one with Alan Ginsberg, now
many years dead. To me, others were badly shot, the color drained
from them I would have to think for effect possibly to give them a
worn look, much like the Dylan we think we know but who, on screen,
appears carefully composed and beautifully photographed. I
understand the project has been going on for some years. How many?
Did Scorsese shoot some of it years before knowing when he would
direct these four hours or did someone else? It is obvious that PBS
timed the release of the film to coincide with the publication of
Dylan’s memoir, a surprising literary success.
Dylan’s opening of his private vault to Scorsese to use in the four
hours helps the film immeasurably, yet I still had that problem of
overwhelming context. Context numbed me. Context wore me down. Dylan
is an important cultural figure. As a songwriter, he did help
capture the welcoming and at times rebellious soul of a generation,
but devoting four hours to his life and work canonizes him far
beyond his ultimate value to society or his place in history. He
influenced some of his era, but he did nothing to change the world,
a criterion I like to apply to anyone put on a pedestal and made
into an icon.
In the film, Joan Baez said something to the effect that people were
not always interested in what Dylan had to say, “but if you are
interested (in what he says) it goes very deep.” Perhaps not being
very interested is where I am on the imaginary fault line of Bob
Dylan as interpreted by Martin Scorsese. And there I stay, despite
this film.
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At NBC News for 35 years, Ron Steinman was bureau chief
in Saigon, Hong Kong and London, was a senior producer on Today and wrote
and produced for Sunday Today. At ABC News Productions, he produced
and wrote documentaries for A&E, TLC, Discovery, Lifetime and the
History Channel. He has a Peabody, a National Headliner award, a
National Press Club award, a International Documentary Festival Gold
Camera Award, two American Women in Radio & Television awards and
has been nominated for five Emmy's. He is a partner in
Douglas/Steinman Productions, whose latest documentary, "Luboml: My
Heart Remembers," aired on PBS' WLIW/21 and the History Channel in
Israel, April 29, 2003. He is the author of, "The Soldiers 'Story",
"Women in Vietnam," and most recently, "Inside Television's First
War: A Saigon Journal," University of Missouri Press, 2002. |
