Summer Concert Series: Bob Dylan: No Direction Home (2005)

Anyone who thinks because this film was directed by Martin Scorsese, it will be anything like The Last Waltz (1978) is dead wrong. This is much less of a concert film and a much more traditional music documentary. Yet still Scorsese being the master director he is puts his own directorial flourishes throughout. This is most apparent earlier in the movie when Scorsese juxtaposes scenes of Bob as a traditional folk singer to the harsh reactions he got from going rock and roll just a few years later. This helps us who were born after the sixties and have always known both sides of Bob understand why the folk crowd felt like they were being betrayed. At the same time Scorsese's masterful filmmaking, makes us feel sorry for Bob later in the movie when he is being booed. Few if any music documentaries have ever captured the uncomfortable feeling these scenes bring and that is because not only are these scenes masterfully done but that the whole film seemed to lead up to this emotional climax in the same way you would seeing in a great fictional movie. What is also a brilliant choice in this film is that with no typical documentary narration, interviews with Bob Dylan seem to provide the narration instead. Sure there are other interviewed and talked to, but Bob is always the focus, making this movie essentially Bob's story told by Bob himself.

As should be excepted from a Bob Dylan film, the music here is excellent. Anyone who like me loves Bob's music will adore what they hear. As well as getting to hear some of Bob's biggest hits we also get to here different versions of songs we know as well as rare recordings that even Dylan buffs weren't familiar with before this film came out.

-Michael J. Ruhland