I'm Glad I'm Not Me: Bob Dylan on Film

The impetus for this book came when my mind wandered to the Coen brothers' 2013 masterpiece Inside Llewyn Davis. The film (a fictionalized account of the winter of 1961 in the Greenwich Village folk scene) climaxes with a shadowy and indistinct glimpse of an unidentified scrawny young folk singer who strums his guitar onstage and plays a song titled “Farewell” as the film's (invented) protagonist leaves the club following his own mildly successful performance. Dylan's name is never spoken, but it takes only the slightest awareness of the arc of 20th century American pop culture to understand who he is and what he represents: the death knell for the rigidly traditionalist folkie Llewyn Davis. It's as devastating a blow as the physical assault Llewyn experiences behind the club a moment later, serving as the first half of a one-two punch to his way of life. I've long been fascinated by examples of a director using a star's persona as a sort of narrative shorthand that makes some larger cultural point without having to state it explicitly. For a very recent example, think of singer Travis Scott being given the role of bard, and the opening lines of dialogue, in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey—Scott works wonderfully in the part, but to anyone aware of his work outside this film, there's an additional jolt of characterization served simply by virtue of who's embodying the role (it's a trick Nolan is fond of, as evidenced by his marvelous casting of Bowie as Tesla in The Prestige). The same is true of any Bob Dylan film appearance; in Richard Marquand's justifiably reviled '80s trashterpiece Hearts of Fire, Dylan plays a once trailblazing rocker sliding into middle age, and anytime he enters a room and the assembled crowd finds their jaws dropping, we believe that impact without needing any dialogue to support the point. That's Bob Dylan walking into the room, and we know exactly what that means. By now, Dylan's reputation (if he has one at all among younger generations) is heavily influenced by the famously unsatisfying live performances he's peddled for the last few decades of his so-called Never-Ending Tour. With a voice that's undeniably fraying, arrangements of classic hits that don't remotely resemble the album versions, and a perch behind a keyboard and beneath a wide-brimmed hat, many report feeling a barely-concealed hostility wafting off Dylan as he performs (though of course it's worth mentioning that many die-hard Dylanologists insist he remains as good as he's ever been). With this perception threatening to overtake the mid-20th century firebrand in the public consciousness, there's never been a better time to look back and consider what we're watching when we watch Bob Dylan on screen.

Ongoing thread. More from Ethan Warren to follow.