ROLLING THUNDER REVUE A BOB DYLAN STORY BY MARTIN SCORSESE: Overlong & Muddled

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese is more so curated than directed by the icon whose name is in the title. Following Bob Dylan and his band throughout the year of 1976, the bicentennial year of America, we are inundated with the small day-to-day nuances of the band’s presence.

The film is broken into pieces of pre-existing footage captured by a multitude of filmmakers such as Martin von Haselberg, along with newly captured interviews with Dylan as well as others, like Joan Baez, Ronnie Hawkins, and bizarrely Sharon Stone, but more on that later. While the documentary is not necessarily disappointing, it’s rather a bit underwhelming.

Provides Little Depth

Dylan is as wonderfully enigmatic and aloof as ever. Superficial but in a sense of brooding mysticism. Seeing him in his early years in the era the Rolling Thunder tour, and then cutting back (albeit far too irregularly) to him in the present offers a wonderful side-by-side comparison of a man who has more often than not gone missing when it’s his turn to entertain the crowd.

Granted, it’s not in his job description, however, it’s an element of his craft that has escaped his core base of fans for some time. Scorsese’s curated picture starts off in that very same stoic fashion we’ve all been accustomed to only for this energetic and terrifically witty texture to burst out. It’s only here in a handful of sequences but it’s no doubt that these moments help flesh Dylan out. When we see him in 1976 it’s almost a relic of what we find today, a fact even Dylan acknowledges in the opening ten minutes.

A Missed Opportunity

Regrettably, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese isn’t at all immersive. It’s a feature that doesn’t have much identity or presence. The intention to create something inspiring and invigorating is here but it doesn’t go any further than what feels like a compilation of concert clips on YouTube, although more crisp and stunning looking.

Aside from the title, you wouldn’t have any idea that this was directed by one of the slickest and stylish directors in film history. What Scorsese has done here is ultimately take preexisting footage and curate his own narrative without flair. It begs the question”What was the real point of it all?” Scorsese had already previously conveyed Dylan in a fabulous fashion in No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, released in 2005, and even better is D.A. Pennebaker’s Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back, released in 1967. There isn’t much here to process because it’s so limited in resonation and further engagement.

The collection of interviewees is also rather strange. You have integral elements and pieces that crafted this tour and then the film cuts away to someone who has little relevance to the overall story. Most notable is the fact that Scorsese shot the interview with Sharon Stone almost a decade ago, which has an emotional connection to the story but unequivocally feels unneeded.

If Scorsese and Dylan’s plan was to play with fact or fiction then it should have been implemented far more evidently and to a greater standard, because ultimately it’s conveyed in a nonexistent and flat manner with little conviction, an inside joke if you will, that nobody finds particularly funny.

Rolling Thunder Revue: Conclusion

The documentary is overeager with a running time of one hundred and forty-four minutes. Of course, you’d never expect this to be under two hours long but you’ll feel every second of this feature that ponders in areas for such an elongated amount of time, for no reason other than to be inundated with abstracts.

You will undeniably feel that extra twenty minutes of filler that verges on becoming painful rather than remaining entertaining. It’s a heavy weight to carry and without any form of value being provoked, it sadly falls into the category of a vanity project rather than a goldmine of immersive character.

What do you think of Scorsese’s latest Bob Dylan venture? Does it match that of No Direction Home: Bob Dylan? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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