BOB DYLAN Movie shows legend's evolution

Dylan changes constantly. He surprises and mystifies.
By CHARLIE McCOLLUM
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
Halfway through Martin Scorsese's enthralling new film "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan," Irish folksinger Liam Clancy talks about the Dylan he knew -- or, more precisely -- didn't really know:
"In old Irish mythology, they talk about shape changers. Dylan changed voices. He changed images. It wasn't really necessary for him to be a definitive person. He was a receiver. He was possessed and he articulated what the rest of us wanted to say but couldn't say."
Of all the truly iconic figures in modern American pop culture, Bob Dylan, even now at age 64, is the most elusive -- as an artist and a human being. He has cloaked his life and his 35-year career in a carefully constructed mystique; he constantly surprises and mystifies.
He is such a master manipulator of his own image that the Dylan of one moment is not the Dylan of the next.
Even those who have known him the longest and the best sometimes struggle to find words to describe him. Poet Allen Ginsberg once referred to him as a "shaman" whose ways and methods of magic simply defy explanation.
Dylan himself says -- in a moment of clarity rare to his often inscrutable public statements -- that he learned early in his career "not to give away too easily anything that was dear to me."
What to watch
All of which makes Scorsese's 31/2-hour film (available on DVD this week, airing on PBS at 9 p.m. Monday and Tuesday) an extraordinary piece of work.
Focusing on Dylan as the young, emerging artist -- roughly the time from his arrival in New York City in the winter of 1961 to his motorcycle accident outside Woodstock in 1966, generally regarded as his most creative period -- "No Direction Home" manages to capture the essence of Dylan, a measure of his evolving personality and, certainly, the power of his work from that time.
It is not a true documentary. Plenty of loose ends are left dangling and questions are left unanswered. Some of Dylan's most obvious flaws -- his drug use during the time, his misuse of friends -- are implied rather than explored.
And "No Direction Home" doesn't acknowledge the control Dylan had over the film. His manager, Jeff Rosen, is not only an executive producer but also conducted the interview with Dylan that is the film's centerpiece.
Still, Scorsese triumphs over all of that.
While the filmmaker is best known for his dramas, from "Mean Streets" through "Raging Bull" to "The Aviator," Scorsese is a passionate observer of popular music. He edited "Woodstock," directed "The Last Waltz" with the Band and produced "The Blues," the innovative PBS miniseries on that musical genre.
What's obvious
His love of music shines through "No Direction Home." Working with riveting archival film footage -- notably extensive outtakes from D.A. Pennebaker's rarely seen "Eat the Document" -- and some refreshingly candid interviews with those who knew Dylan -- Scorsese has managed to craft a vivid, intimate epic about an enormously influential artist.
Scorsese sticks exclusively to the five-year period of the 1960s when Dylan assumed and discarded musical personas at a startling rate even for him, going from derivative folkie to oracle of the protest generation to visionary poet to charismatic rocker.
It was an extraordinary burst of creativity, during which he recorded his defining albums ("Bringing It All Back Home," "Highway 61 Revisited," "Blonde On Blonde") and songs for the ages ("Like A Rolling Stone," "Chimes of Freedom," "The Times They Are A'Changin'").
In "No Direction Home," Dylan terms himself a "musical expeditionary," adding, "I was in a certain arena artistically that no one else had ever been in before, ever." But folksinger Tony Glover strikes a chord when he calls Dylan "a sponge," someone who absorbed the best of artists ranging from Hank Williams and Webb Pierce to Woody Guthrie and Gene Vincent -- and then moved on to something totally different.
"I'd taken all the elements that I've ever known to make wide, sweeping statements which conveyed a feeling that was the essence of the spirit of the times," Dylan acknowledges in the film.
The greatness of those years comes through in the live performances that provide the driving force for "No Direction Home."