I Saw the Bob Dylan Movie, and Surprisingly, It Wasn’t All That Bad — with One Huge Omission

Movies starring modern figures are dangerous. In the 2022 film” Elvis,” Austin Butler is credited with doing a commendable career, but he also had to overcome one problem: almost everyone on earth is familiar with Elvis Presley’s appearance, and Lloyd Bentsen might have said to the young Butler,” I knew Elvis Presley.” My companion, Elvis Presley, was also close. And you, dear, are no Elvis Presley”.

In the recent hit film” A Complete Unidentified,” Timothée Chalamet struggles to portray young Bob Dylan. The globe is overflowing with photos, video, and audio tapes of Bob Dylan. Chalamet has to make do with Mr. Robert A. Zimmerman, perhaps the greatest Bob Dylan imitation of all time. But surprisingly enough, Chalamet does a reliable, reputable job, and the film moves along rapidly in telling a staple tale of Boomer mythology, the Bob Dylan Origin Story. &nbsp,

Here is a record of ten mistakes in the film, and there are more where those are from, as is typically the case with movies of this kind. There is a certain amount of corner-cutting and fudging of the facts in order to enhance the crisis. The majority of the mistakes made in the movie are small or were made to enhance the show’s remarkable impact, so they can be simply overlooked. However, the film’s biggest flaw is not so much an error as a missed opportunity, and it is also a chance that the directors had to include a significant amount of drama in a scene that truly suited the script’s many elements. &nbsp,

In the early 1960s Greenwich Village folk music image, Dylan makes a name for himself in New York City. Everyone involved is on the far left, Dylan projects to a New Jersey hospital to join his warrior, Woody Guthrie, and there ( at least in the movie ) encounters another folk singer, Pete Seeger. &nbsp,

Both Guthrie and Seeger ( superbly portrayed by Edward Norton ) were hardcore leftist ideologues. So was Dylan’s love interest Joan Baez ( here somewhat disappointingly played by Monica Barbaro, who is fine but conspicuously lacks Ms. Baez’s beauty, voice, and charisma ) and another Dylan girlfriend, Suze Rutolo, who walks through the Village arm-in-arm with him on the cover of his 1963 album” The Freewheelin ‘ Bob Dylan”, and is here transmogrified into” Sylvie Russo” .&nbsp,

In” A Full Unknown,” Dylan easily slips into this environment, writing protest songs that awe and respect from his peers and competitors, as well as the admiration of fans of folk music. The film therefore follows Dylan’s resolve to begin creating a sound more rock and roll than traditional folk music. He is depicted as a warrior of imaginative dignity, who resolutely pursued his creative vision despite Seeger’s and other folk aficionados’ furious opposition and the crowd’s jeers and catcalls at the Newport Folk Festival. &nbsp,

That’s great, but the movie’s handling of the political arena misses an opportunity. ” A Complete Unfamiliar” is really aware of the elections of the day, reminding us in due course of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy death, the struggle against discrimination, and more. We get flashes of Dylan singing some of his protest songs, and appearing ( as he did in real life ) at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a large civil rights event that drew over 250, 000 people.

But, as Baez and others had hoped him to remain, Dylan resisted being just a song of protest songs in the real world. He also wrote a song in 1964 called” My Up Pages,” which elicits a poignant critique of the honest folkies who took themselves so seriously and believed their leftist statements could and would change the world:” I was so much older therefore, I’m younger than that now.”

Dylan’s decision to stop writing about social causes and events flowed exactly like his popular choice to get energy. Although the latter is richly dramatized in” A Full Unknown,” Dylan’s renunciation of political writing is never mentioned at all. There is no field in which Dylan performs” My Back Pages” in front of a crowd of angry leftist folkies, and such a picture would have been as fictional as various scenes of the film because Dylan didn’t record the song live until 1978. Even so, the absence of any notice of Dylan’s attempt to avoid politics is all the man in light of the fact that the film never shys away from the political spectrum. In a prolonged field, Seeger bravely defends himself against a prosecutor who has a clear suspicion that he is a commie, and Dylan is nowhere to be seen.

&nbsp, &nbsp, &nbsp, Related: Amazon Cuts Key Scene from’ It’s a Great Life’ Simply as We’re About to Emerge from Pottersville

Was the fact that Hollywood today is more political than ever before make this omission make them dare not to include anything that doesn’t fit the myth they’re trying to make work?

In this environment, Bob Dylan has become famous for refusing to be categorized or pinned down in a variety of ways, which would be humorous. This film, which is great total and fair seeing, also celebrates him for that very truth. However, there are some traces that Hollywood is unsure to mix. &nbsp,

Regardless, Chalamet was so convincing as Dylan that how’s hoping he becomes the target of the DCU — you know, the Dylan Cinematic Universe. We could have endless sequels of Dylan the superhero, nobody’s man but his own: Dylan Crashes His Motorcycle ( the famous crash is repeatedly alluded to, but not portrayed in” A Complete Unknown” ), Dylan Skips Woodstock, Dylan Goes Country, Dylan Becomes a Family Man, Dylan Dons Whiteface and Meets Up with Joan Baez Again, Dylan Becomes a Christian, Dylan Gets Lost in the Eighties, Dylan Becomes a DJ, Dylan Sings Sinatra, on and on. The person might have more Batman-related sequels than Batman. Travel on, Hollywood! He contains hundreds!

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