I didn’t really feel like searching for an image to go with this “take” on this movie. I didn’t even look up the writers. Reasons: 1) I have always hated his voice; 2) I have always disliked his face; 3) I never liked his songs.
They say Dylan’s an enigma. BUT, Daniel Plainview, in There Will Be Blood by P.T. Anderson and Daniel Day Lewis, was also an enigmatic person. But if you think and get ever closer to the main character, you’ll understand some of his behavior. One of many examples: in There Will Be Blood, at some point in a restaurant when he is sitting with his (now deaf) son, he throws a napkin over his face and says some things. It is so completely bizarre that you don’t even know what he’s doing, but when you think about it a little more, you realize he is making sure his son isn’t able to read his lips. Because his next act is to threaten to kill the men at the next table.
In this, I don’t think the writers allowed us to get “closer” as it were, to Dylan, even though I dislike him and probably wouldn’t have wanted to. What I did like about the movie were the small corners that were rebuilt of MacDougal and Minetta Lane, MacDougal and Bleeker Street, and various other spots and nightclubs. But it didn’t explain the legendary hatred between him and Joan Baez. His girlfriend and ultimate wife was relegated to a composite character and is mostly used to chastise him. It wasn’t even clear why he “went guitar” at a folk festival. They’ve written a movie about someone for whom they cannot answer the most critical question asked of any screenwriter, and to a lesser extent, novelist. “What does he want?”
You could sort of say that he loved folk music and wanted to make it in the city, like millions of other people, including yours truly. And instead of facing an avalanche of negativity, just got in. He made it, without doing much but singing his lyrics on an acoustic guitar. But at the end of this journey, after having destroyed his folk music career by going electric, someone says, “You’re free.” But is that what he wanted? And what the hell does that mean?
I think Timothee Chalomet probably deserves a lot of praise for portraying a character who doesn’t really seem to express his wants, his ambition, his drive, his passion. The most memorable line in the movie, for me, when talking about Joan Baez: “She’s pretty.”
Anyway, disclaimer, I knew Dylan’s business manager or catalogue manager for a number of years in the 80s. Naomi Satlzman was her name. She died a couple of years ago. She called him the great poet of the 21st century. She also raised most of his kids. Kept them out of trouble. I think I’d like to see her life and career more than Dylan’s.