2011x3 - Bob Dylan: No Direction Home - Part 2

May 21, 2011

Martin Scorsese continues to explore the emotional, musicial and intellectual journey of Bob Dylan's early career. The story turns dark. At 23, Dylan is already a newsworthy phenomenon and with that success comes expectations - from the old left to become a politicial activist, and from the media to articulate the concerns of America's youth. It's a role in which Dylan is completely uninterested. He is already on the move, finding a new musical vocabulary to capture the complexity of a seismic cultural shift. He injects a heightened sense of poetry into his writing and adds electricity to his music, electricity that now seems inevitable but at the time saw him labelled a sell-out and a traitor. Scorsese delicately balances Dylan's internal world with signpost images from the external world. Dylan's music is the backdrop as the war in Vietnam escalates and the nightly news brings home images people would never have dreamed of seeing on their television sets. Scorsese takes the time to let viewers really see the music unfold in revelatory concert performances. By 1966 Dylan's personal world has become one of constant touring and press conferences. By the end of the film it is plainly obvious that for Dylan there are some journeys from which there is No Direction Home.