The Jester

Kathleen and I went recently to see the film A Complete Unknown with Timothee Chalamet channeling Bob Dylan. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, which did a great job of capturing the atmosphere of Greenwich Village in New York during the folk-music boom of the early 1960s.

The film shows Dylan at his best, as the ambitious, inspired genius who tapped into the psyche of a generation and helped call attention to the injustices that troubled young people at that time. He sang about segregation, unnecessary wars, atomic weapons, and racism in ways that made people care about those problems and try to do something about them. It also shows him at his worst, using women as interchangeable parts (much like his idol, Woody Guthrie) to comfort him when he felt lost or lonely—and that was much of the time. The filmmakers, at Dylan’s request, changed the name of his first love interest from “Suze” (Susan Rotolo) to “Sylvie.” He argued that she was the only person depicted in the film who was not an iconic celebrity and was thus entitled to a degree of anonymity. The result was interesting. In the film, Suze/Sylvie is portrayed as passive and unimportant, where in fact (from other things I have read), she was a strong woman who enlightened him about social issues and inspired some of his best early music. On the other hand, I thought Elle Fanning as Sylvie did an amazing job of acting “without the ball.” Her best scenes showed her reacting to Dylan’s romance with folk music queen, Joan Baez—she doesn’t speak in those scenes, but shows all of her emotions with facial expressions.

The movie uses the songs of Dylan almost as another character, not just as background filler, but to advance the storyline in clever ways. For instance, in one of the final scenes, he bids farewell to acoustic protest music by performing “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Chalamet, Norton, and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez all played their own instruments and did their own singing. They were all spot-on in those performances, and the film is worth seeing for that aspect alone.

A Complete Unknown focuses on Dylan’s rise to stardom, the struggle to deal with his newfound celebrity, and his battle to regain control of the direction of his career and his music. The undisputed star of traditional folk music, Pete Seeger, took Dylan under his wing and helped him rise to the top of the folk world. Ed Norton depicts the banjo-playing minstrel incredibly well, but the musician is unfairly shown as one of those who refuses to allow Dylan to grow into different genres as a musician. In fact, Seeger was conflicted about Dylan’s changes and came to love his electric music as much as his original acoustic material. Alan Lomax is held up as the villain in the film, shown as a bullying purist who cannot accept anything but authentic folk music. Actually, he (along with his father and brother) were largely responsible for starting the folk music boom of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Carrying a battery-operated tape recorder, they traveled into every corner of the U.S., capturing and preserving English, Irish, and Scottish folk songs from Appalachia along with the music of former slaves and sharecroppers in the South. That incredible music would have probably been lost without his efforts.

The climax of the film takes place at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in 1965. In that famous concert, Dylan brings a newly assembled band, plugs in, and plays his new, electrified music that would later appear on the Highway 61 Revisited album. The audience rebels and tries to boo him off of the stage while Seeger, Lomax and others scramble in an effort to curtail his performance. In reality, my understanding of the celebrated event is that it was not electric music alone that generated such a virulent reaction. Instead, many people were angered that Dylan seemed to be rejecting socially conscious songs in favor of those that used surreal poetic imagery to wrestle with personal issues and those outside the traditional purview of protest music. Songs such as “Positively 4^th Street,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” remain among my all-time favorites of his songs. He recorded much of that landmark album just four days after the Newport concert.

My wife, Kathleen, not as familiar with the Dylan story as I am, suggested that the film left her wondering who Dylan really was. It was a great observation, because he has repeatedly reinvented his music, his persona, and even the stories about his past. My brother Dan, the one who first introduced me to Dylan’s music fifty years ago, has said something along the lines of “If you don’t like Dylan’s latest record or style of music, just wait a while; he’ll change again to something you might enjoy more.” I have seen him in concert twice, and both shows were disappointing. He famously mumbles his lyrics, and even the music of familiar songs is changed to an almost unrecognizable form. He speeds up the slow ones and slows down the fast ones. Moreover, he barely speaks between songs, reveals nothing about himself, and seems as if he does not enjoy performing. Yet, I heard a story about when he was touring Europe relatively recently and spent a few days, by himself in a small town in northern Sweden. He showed up at a local bar and asked if he could sing the next day. Of course, the owner said sure, and made a few handwritten signs advertising the event. Dylan played for over an hour, just him and his acoustic guitar before a few dozen people. If that story is any indication, he still feels the need to play and sing in front of an audience and enjoys it more than might be apparent.

I guess the truth is that we will never really understand Dylan or his many personas. This movie, like Todd Haynes’ 2007 art film, I’m Not There (which used six different actors, including Cate Blanchett to portray the many sides of the artist) is merely the latest attempt to get to the core of Bob Dylan. Maybe it’s best to give up on those efforts to make sense of the man and simply enjoy his music.

Singer/songwriter Cat Power recently recorded a live, note-for-note recreation of a 1966 concert Dylan gave in London, shortly after the Newport show and the release of the Highway 61 record. The album, Cat Power Sings Dylan, even includes an audience member famously yelling “Judas” during one of her electrified numbers. This faithful recreation gives a good sense of what a Dylan concert was like during his peak years and is worth a listen

Better yet, listen to the Highway 61 Revisited album. Sixty years after its initial release, it remains electric.

A side note:

While watching A Complete Unknown, I kept hearing the words of Don McLean’s 1971 song “American Pie.” He clearly was one who, while he enjoyed Dylan’s music, lamented that folk music and the rock music of the late ‘60s had undermined the “danceable music” of his childhood in the 1950s. One partial verse deals with Bob Dylan. I have parenthetically included my interpretation of McLean’s lyrics.

For ten years we’ve been on our own, and moss grows fat on a rolling stone,

But that’s not how it used to be

(McLean started writing this song in 1969, ten years after Buddy Holly died in a plane crash in February 1959—the day the music died; rolling stone is a reference to Dylan’s song, “Like a Rolling Stone”)

When the Jester sang for the King and Queen, in a coat he borrowed from James Dean

(The Jester is Dylan, the King and Queen are Elvis Presley and perhaps Joan Baez; Dean’s most famous role in his brief film career was Rebel Without a Cause, which Dylan loved; on the front of the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Dylan is seen walking with Suze Rotolo in a brown jacket similar to the one worn by Dean in the film, but more than that, the line refers to Dylan adopting the rebellious persona of Dean, complete with the mumbling, inarticulate delivery of his lines)

And a voice that came from you and me

(Dylan has often been called the voice of the ‘60s counterculture generation, pronouncing concerns about social issues with his protest songs such as “Blowing in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-changing”)

And while the King was looking down, the Jester stole his thorny crown

(Elvis abdicated his throne when he enlisted in the army and gave up rock music to produce bad movies and Vegas-style songs; Dylan took the position as pop music’s biggest star, but it came at a price (the “thorny crown”); the price of fame was a loss of freedom and control over his life—as Jesus also learned, the crown had sharp thorns)