No Direction Home: Bob Dylan
Director: Martin Scorsese
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 2.0
Ken Burns-like profile of Dylan's formative years, from his growing up in Minnesota, to being influenced by Woody Guthrie, to becoming an unwilling spokesman for a generation, to turning electric and now to being a Pulitzer winner (though it's been shown they'll give those to anybody). No offense to Scorsese - and he is a marvelous filmmaker - but he's never been much of a documentarian: his best (in my opinion) is Italianamerican, but that picture's charm is due to its informal structure and the presence of Marty's charming mother, Catherine. In this, he doesn't criticize Dylan (he wasn't even the one to interview the man) or even present much enlightening information about the artist (I've seen a lot of the footage before in other places), and the real craft of all this is courtesy of David Tedeschi, the film's editor. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back remains the essential Dylan documentary that even non-acolytes need to see.
