Posted on 07/26/2003 7:35:14 PM PDT by Oorang
Bob Dylan Plays Bob Dylan, Whoever That Is By JON PARELES
Lorey Sebastian, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics Bob Dylan as Jack Fate in "Masked and Anonymous": the latest in a long line of identities.
JACK FATE isn't exactly Bob Dylan, although he's the central character in Mr. Dylan's new movie, "Masked and Anonymous." Then again, he's not exactly not Mr. Dylan, either.
He has Mr. Dylan's poker face, his song catalog, his wardrobe of cowboy suits, his reputation for making songs unrecognizable and his illustrious past. "Nobody could be like you, and a great many have tried," a sleazy promoter named Uncle Sweetheart tells him. Jack Fate has Mr. Dylan's band, which appears on screen as a cover band named, well, Simple Twist of Fate. And he has Mr. Dylan's gift for dry, knowing one-liners: when Uncle Sweetheart tells him, "You're all skin and bones," he calmly replies, "Aren't we all?"
Then again, everybody's a philosopher in "Masked and Anonymous," which opened on Thursday. Thug, promoter, journalist, girlfriend, revolutionary, television executive, dictator, prison guard — they all speak in parables and aphorisms and wisecracks that might just be wisdom, borrowing the diction of the King James Bible and of the blues. Their conversations ponder freedom, love, politics, time, conscience and death. And the tone — prophecy switching to zinger and back — is familiar to anyone who's ever heard a Dylan song. The screenplay is credited to Sergei Petrov and Rene Fontaine, pseudonyms for Mr. Dylan and the movie's director, Larry Charles.
Identity has long been a shell game for Mr. Dylan. "You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy, you may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy," he sang in "Gotta Serve Somebody." But always, he has confounded and intrigued the many listeners who have tried to figure him out.
His voice and his songwriting are immediately identifiable, yet he's utterly mercurial, racking up as many inconsistencies as there are gigs on his perpetual touring schedule. Ever since he realized, very early on, that being the voice of a generation was a thankless, impossible role, he has strewn his songs and public appearances with hints and contradictions. He dodges even the slightest chance of being pinned down: He has been a believer and a skeptic, a traditionalist and a rebel, a heartbreaker and a man left lonely, an activist and a cynic.
"Masked and Anonymous" — title duly noted — steps back enough to let viewers see how much Mr. Dylan enjoys his elusiveness. He has registered what people have said about him through the years, and he doesn't necessarily mind a little hyperbolic praise, including being compared to Jesus walking on water. Characters in the movie discuss his songs in the manner of rock critics or discussion-board fans.
He's also well aware of how far his songs have traveled. The first one heard as the movie begins is "My Back Pages," sung in Japanese by the Magokoro Brothers. Searing performances of songs like "Drifter's Escape" (which is mysteriously absent from the soundtrack album) and "Cold Irons Bound" by Mr. Dylan and his band share the soundtrack with various unlikely versions of Dylan songs, including a turntable-scratching Italian remake of "Like a Rolling Stone." They provide yet another batch of alternative Dylans to toy with.
Mr. Dylan has had a sporadic film presence since the 1960's, appearing in jumpy documentaries like "Don't Look Back" and "Eat the Document" and making an incongruous appearance as a retired rocker and mentor in the 1987 "Hearts of Fire." In Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," he wrote the soundtrack music (including "Knockin' on Heaven's Door") and played a knife-wielding character with an apt Dylan name: Alias. But Mr. Dylan took charge of a film only with the rambling 1978 "Renaldo and Clara," which he wrote (with Sam Shepard) and directed during the ever-mutating mid-1970's Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
He called himself Renaldo while Ronnie Hawkins (who brought together the Band) was billed as "Bob Dylan." Other people are also mistaken in the movie for Mr. Dylan, including the musician Bob Neuwirth, who explains, "I'm not Bob Dylan, I'm the Masked Tortilla."
In a way, "Masked and Anonymous" is a latter-day sequel to "Renaldo and Clara," with a star who's had an additional quarter-century of hard-traveling mileage. Like "Renaldo and Clara," the new movie has rockers, preachers, prisoners and backstage machinations, and it teases at questions about the songwriter as public figure, hired hand and lover. But there's a major difference: "Masked and Anonymous" plays like a feature film, complete with an intelligible plot, vivid professional camerawork and well-known actors, rather than like a stoned, hand-held home movie.
It also plays like a Dylan song: a shaggy-dog story about power, love, show business, prodigal sons, faith and destiny. And it flips easily between the attitudes of Mr. Dylan's two most recent albums: the death-haunted estrangement of "Time Out of Mind" and the gallows-humor cackles and shrugs of " `Love and Theft.' " Jack Fate seems familiar because he has inhabited Dylan songs for many years.
"Masked and Anonymous" takes place "somewhere in America," where Spanish and English words blare from radios. (It was shot on digital video in some vividly seedy locations in Los Angeles.) A bloody revolution and counter-revolution are raging; the dictatorial president, whose portrait seems to be on every flat surface, is dying. Jack Fate, the faded rock legend, is released from prison to play at a dubious humanitarian benefit organized by Uncle Sweetheart (John Goodman). A trusted roadie (Luke Wilson) returns with an old bluesman's guitar, and a bitter, 1960's-obsessed journalist (Jeff Bridges) shows up to write a story. Whose son Jack Fate is, and why he was jailed, are among the twists.
The narrative sounds bleak in summary; there's no happy ending, and there are some grim, sudden bursts of violence. "Every period in history has been more or less tragic," the journalist observes. Mr. Dylan's prognosis for America is a ruthless clampdown on everything from behavior to collective memory. But just as often, the movie is droll, filled with pithy, hardboiled comebacks. "You ever coming back?" a friend asks as Fate ambles away. "I did come back," he says.
Mr. Dylan and Mr. Charles (best known as a writer and producer of "Seinfeld" and as a director for "Curb Your Enthusiasm") have packed "Masked and Anonymous" with enough enigmatic visual cues and in-jokes to make Dylan fans long for the freeze-frames of a DVD. The fictional TV network's schedule board lists Dylan-titled shows like "Jokerman," "Empire Burlesque" and "Hurricane." An office building directory includes a character out of William Burroughs, Dr. Benway. More mysteriously, the journalist's girlfriend (Penélope Cruz) prays while wearing a Metallica T-shirt, and her hand is tattooed "333." And are those stigmata on one character's hand?
The movie ends with Fate, and America, worse off than they were when it started. But his craggy face looks somehow satisfied, as if he never expected anything else. "Sometimes it's not enough to know the meaning of things, sometimes we have to know what things don't mean as well," he says in voice-over. Fans will prise meanings from "Masked and Anonymous"; its author has put them there. And as they do, he makes one more drifter's escape.
As someone, who actually was there, and saw/heard ( OUCH ! ) one of his very first " performances " ( Joan Baez litterally dragged him on stage with her, at one of her concerts [ late August/earlt Sept. of '61, in N.Y.) live, I can tell you that the audience rose as one and booed him off.
He and his ilk were part of the pied pipers of the destruction of a large part of a certain generation; teaching them to hate America and ALL she stands for !
THAT civilization?
A civilization in which you do not participate or participate in reluctantly I assume. Please clue us in to what your "transitional period" has in store for those of use who kinda like our traditions and civilization.
Big brass beds offend your delicate sensibilities, eh? Whereas I never believed Ronny was guilty of wanting to drag the country back to the 50s, I must admit you seem to fit the bill.
shhhh, don't mention sex
God bless you nopardons. I wish I had met you before I paid good money to see Baez and Dylan on their "Rolling Thunder" tour in the 1970s. What crap. A hockey arena in Hartford, CT. We walked out. Unlike some who thought Dylan and Baez to be Gods no matter how much they stunk.
Yeah, but you were an old biddie back then, so I don't take your critique too seriously.
The 20th century can be thought of as a great hinge upon which western civilization has swung into a new phase. Whether you want to go or not, you (or your progeny) are moving into the new phase. The job of conservatives is to bring along all that is valuable and worth saving from the past (most importantly the principles contained in the American founding documents), while recogizing at the same time that some folkways and traditions from the past must be discarded, however reluctant we may be to let them go.
Hey...why not just take my words to mean what I mean them to say? I don't dodge. If you don't understand, I will be more than happy to explain. But...please...don't rephrase what I write to imply the opposite of what I said.
btw...I know what the problem is. Dylan is your youth. Just like 103 year old men get all emotional over "Tipperary" you get emotional about Bob Dylan. Ok with me.
Do you know if Wait's Big Time is out on DVD? It was in print on VHS only for a very short time (in the late 80's).
In the late 1930s, a man named Richard Dyer Bennit, a singer of old music ( folk musice, but not what that term connoted by the end of the 1960s. ) was very popular. My mother liked him and his music. So, when I and some frinds discovered it, she was pleased. When our group "found" THE WEAVERS, she was NOT pleased at all and I had my first lesson in boycotting stinking COMMIES, from my mother; who went on quite a tear about them and Seeger in particular.
Sorry that we didn't met earlier ... I would have warned you. LOL
And for those of you still drooling sycophants of a grubby, no talent hack, who was and still is a MARIST, I suggest that you read " JOAN BAEZ AND A VOICE TO SING WITH ", by Joan, herself. She skips over much that transpired; however, you can read her own words about her "horrible guilt" at being " rich ( gasp )and her rememberances of things " Bobby " etc.
I thought you were being sarcastic. I apologize for the mistake.
When one is a captive in an audience, one is obliged to hear, sometimes, what one neither paid for nor chose tohear. It was a JOAN BAEZ concert. Dylan was NOT supposed to "sing "; if you want to call his catterwalling "singing" and the ENTIRE audience, at Shea Stadium, booed him down.
Don't like what I post ? Ignore it; it's easy ! ;^)
Dylan dumped Baez -- all those many many years ago -- partly because he could no longer stand her insufferable habit of politicizing everything. Dylan was never a true believer like Baez -- never. He was always far too intelligent to buy into all the "movement" crap.
Accepted! I apologize as well. My gripe with Dylan is he was effective. Maybe I should like Dylan--he was only preaching alienation. Rappers today are preaching alienation with violence.
Simply wrong, and I know you have no evidence that he ever spoke out in favor of communism. None of the "movement" luminaries could get him to speak out about anything at all really. He did all his talking in his lyrics. You simply have the guy all wrong.
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