It was in 1968 that Bob Dylan first walked into my family house. Of course he wasn't actually there in person, but my mom's younger sister - our hippie aunt - came by one day bearing presents for her two nephews. My older brother was given a copy of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol.1 and I was given a couple of books. Somehow or other my brother convinced my mom to let him put the record on in the midst of a family visit - which I seem to recall included my great-grandmother, who only spoke Yiddish - and all of the sudden every voice in the house was stilled (and if you know anything about extended Jewish families you'll know what a miracle that is).
A hard nasal twang that caused everybody over the age of eleven in the room to screw their faces up in disgust stormed out of the hi-fi and took command of the room. All I heard was something about not working on Maggie's farm no more, before my mother gathered her wits and ejected the record. My mother never did really warm up to Bob Dylan, and although at the tender age of seven I wasn't set to become his biggest fan either, I do remember being captivated by "Mr Tambourine Man" as for some reason it made me think of someone walking along a beach watching the sun setting over the ocean.
I'm sure many people have their own Bob Dylan story, about how they first heard his music and their reaction to it. It's almost impossible to listen to him and not form an opinion about his music, the sound of his voice, and the lyrics of his songs. But who was this guy? All right so we know he was born Robert Zimmerman to middle class parents from Minnesota, but that doesn't tell us anything about the mind and soul behind the music.
In his movie I'm Not There, now available on DVD in a two disc special edition, director/sceenwriter Todd Haynes has placed Bob Dylan under a microscope in an attempt to show us the many facets of the man's character. Unlike a biography that details a person's life from beginning to end, Haynes has chosen to focus primarily on the period in Dylan's life that began with the infamous plugging in of electric guitars at the Newport Folk Festival and ended with his near death in a motorcycle accident.
Article comments
1 - Derek Fleek
I completely agree. It doesn't answer questions as much as it describes his personality. This was one of the best films of 2007. This is a must have for your collection of DVDs
2 - Ken
I despised this movie, and I'm a huge Dylan fan. If capturing the mannerisms of Dylan was so important, why weren't the characters named Bob Dylan. Or is that not "artsy" enough? Ridiculous.