Bob Dylan's Dream
May. 28th, 2021 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustLast night BBC4 offered us Masked and Anonymous (2003): a film written by Bob Dylan, starring Bob Dylan, that I had never heard of - how could this be? We watched it without expecting too much - we have, after all seen Renaldo and Clara - but the cast was respectable, and the soundtrack offered an interesting mix of Dylan singing, and of other people singing Dylan. On that basis, I was not disappointed. Roger Ebert really didn't like it, but although he is hostile, he isn't far off the mark: the movie he criticises is the movie I saw. It's just that he didn't like it, and I - well, I didn't like it exactly, I wouldn't claim to have followed much of what was going on, and I rolled my eyes at much of the dialogue - but there were pleasures to be had, too.
In a country in the throes of revolution - the sort of country you'd hope to get away with festooning with fairy lights and calling "south of the border" (filmed entirely in LA), and the sort of revolution in which revolutionaries are the good guys until they take power, when they must be opposed by counter-revolutionaries who are much the same - Uncle Sweetheart (John Goodman) is putting together a benefit concert. Ostensibly, this is to benefit some charity or other, because that's how you get rock stars to play; Uncle Sweetheart plans that it should benefit him, because he owes money to the wrong people; and the new President wants the public relations benefits. There will be only one star, whose career has gone downhill to the point where he is now in prison, and he is released in order to play: this is Bob Dylan, going by the name of Jack Fate. The naming convention of the film does not invite the audience to see him as a personification of fate: Uncle Sweetheart is not a sweetheart, and Jeff Bridges' obnoxious journalist Tom Friend is not your friend. In fact:
Was the name chosen purely to justify the backing band employed for the concert, described as a 'Jack Fate tribute band', being called 'Simple Twist of Fate'? Don't know, but it amused me. I liked, too, the way the artist immediately slots himself into the group, and the next thing you know they are playing an easy-listening version of Dixie: I have a theory about Bob Dylan, that all he wants is to play along with whatever band is playing at the time, and certainly this seems to be true of Jack Fate. Would he actually have gone along with the set list provided by the President for the benefit concert: the Beatles' Revolution n° 9, Won't Get Fooled Again...? Who knows? We never get to the benefit concert, because things fall apart in a shoot-out worthy of Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts. In fact, the whole narrative feels like something from one of Dylan's songs, and it might have worked better in that form.
But then we wouldn't have had Tinashe Kachingwe as Mrs Brown's lovely daughter, a child who has been presseured by her mother into learning all of Jack Fate's songs. She sang, clearly and sweetly, unaccompanied, The Times Are a-Changing, and I'd have been sorry to lose that moment. Is that the intended response? All those present listen with exaggeratedly thoughtful expressions, and the soundtrack layers Fate's (not obviously connected) musings over her voice, so who knows. It was my response. Despite all the less-than-wonderful stuff Dylan has done in his life, the wonderful songs remain wonderful, and not only do we have his recordings, we can and we do carry on singing them.
In a country in the throes of revolution - the sort of country you'd hope to get away with festooning with fairy lights and calling "south of the border" (filmed entirely in LA), and the sort of revolution in which revolutionaries are the good guys until they take power, when they must be opposed by counter-revolutionaries who are much the same - Uncle Sweetheart (John Goodman) is putting together a benefit concert. Ostensibly, this is to benefit some charity or other, because that's how you get rock stars to play; Uncle Sweetheart plans that it should benefit him, because he owes money to the wrong people; and the new President wants the public relations benefits. There will be only one star, whose career has gone downhill to the point where he is now in prison, and he is released in order to play: this is Bob Dylan, going by the name of Jack Fate. The naming convention of the film does not invite the audience to see him as a personification of fate: Uncle Sweetheart is not a sweetheart, and Jeff Bridges' obnoxious journalist Tom Friend is not your friend. In fact:
... you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late...
Was the name chosen purely to justify the backing band employed for the concert, described as a 'Jack Fate tribute band', being called 'Simple Twist of Fate'? Don't know, but it amused me. I liked, too, the way the artist immediately slots himself into the group, and the next thing you know they are playing an easy-listening version of Dixie: I have a theory about Bob Dylan, that all he wants is to play along with whatever band is playing at the time, and certainly this seems to be true of Jack Fate. Would he actually have gone along with the set list provided by the President for the benefit concert: the Beatles' Revolution n° 9, Won't Get Fooled Again...? Who knows? We never get to the benefit concert, because things fall apart in a shoot-out worthy of Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts. In fact, the whole narrative feels like something from one of Dylan's songs, and it might have worked better in that form.
But then we wouldn't have had Tinashe Kachingwe as Mrs Brown's lovely daughter, a child who has been presseured by her mother into learning all of Jack Fate's songs. She sang, clearly and sweetly, unaccompanied, The Times Are a-Changing, and I'd have been sorry to lose that moment. Is that the intended response? All those present listen with exaggeratedly thoughtful expressions, and the soundtrack layers Fate's (not obviously connected) musings over her voice, so who knows. It was my response. Despite all the less-than-wonderful stuff Dylan has done in his life, the wonderful songs remain wonderful, and not only do we have his recordings, we can and we do carry on singing them.
