The Duke On "Masked And Anonymous" - Page 4

Into all this stumbles Jeff Bridges, who at first appears as he did in The Big Lebowski, looking dishevelled and apathetic. He soon reveals himself as a radical journalist, out to uncover some sort of scandal behind this whole concert fiasco.

But of course he's not really playing that at all.

What he is in fact performing, is a pretty much dead-on reprisal of the Dylan of Don't Look Back, his hair slicked back yet haphazard, his tall frame decked out entirely in black. His eyes hidden behind sunglasses. When Bridges confronts Jack Fate in a trailer, it is a virtual re-run of the infamous hotel-room interview from Pennebaker's film, where Dylan ran rings around the young student assigned to ask him a few questions, spinning taunting, barbed, impenetrable answers around the young man's trembling notepad.

Here, the Real Dylan stands back, and lets Bridges perform the aural assault.

Of course, when Fate finally gets the upper hand, an upper hand which grips a broken bottle directed at Bridges' neck, he can't do it.

As much as Dylan may no longer identify with the young "poet of a generation" that he once was, he can't bring himself to truly exorcise that particular poltergeist.

Which is maybe why, in a film so concerned with the fruitlessness of interpretive approaches to popular culture, we are constantly being invited to look beyond the events onscreen, to see what's really being said. Which is usually something along the lines of "What Bob Dylan has to say about Bob Dylan is this…"

We also get plenty of scenes positively vibrating with the torrents of seemingly random gumpf being cast into the ether.

These, too, however, are the butt of the film's wit.

One scene has Dylan sitting on a bus next to a revolutionary, played by Giovanni Ribisi, best known as Phoebe's Brother in Friends In The City or whatever. Ribisi rhymes off a five-minute monologue utterly drenched in pompous, paranoid drivel. Twenty seconds after his nonsense has come to an end, he steps off the bus only to be shot. Dylan looks utterly nonplussed.

Some folks saw this as an example of "actual" pretentious-bullshit instead of the very, very obvious mockery of such which it undoubtedly is.

Another moment has Goodman and Luke Wilson look on as Dylan and band (his actual current touring band, named in the film as "Simple Twist Of Fate") play in the background. They engage in a highly involved conversation about what the song "means", both offering wildly varying interpretations, both of which seem ridiculous.

Dylan, in fact, whilst being the focal point of everything the film has to say about anything, is in fact something of a drifter in the overall affair. His character is really little more developed than when he played Alias in Pat Garret And Billy The Kid, and whilst he is onscreen pretty much constantly from his introduction ten minutes in, he never really says very much.

Article Author: Duke De Mondo

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