NO DIRECTION HOME (2005)

DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese/BUDGET: $2,000,000

For my birthday back over a decade ago one of my best friends gave me the No Direction Home dvd (remember DVDs?). I was very happy when I got it and added it to my DVD collection right away. However, as anyone with a large movie collection can tell you, it’s very easy for movies to get lost in there. And that is what happened with this one. But, about a year later, it popped its head out from the crowded shelf and caught my eye and so it was time to finally watch it.

No Direction Home is a Martin Scorsese directed documentary about the life and career of Bob Dylan. And I can say that after having watched the film back all those years ago I felt like I knew a whole lot more about Dylan while at the same time still don't knowing him at all. And I think that is the point.

In the book The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell at one point talks about how we define people. How it is a common tendency for us to always define people in simple and singular ways: "Jack is a liar", "Jane is kind", "Bill is shy", "Betty is stuck-up", etc... But, Jack, Jane, Bill, Betty and all of us are more than just one simple definition/characteristic. And that is where this documentary succeeds so brilliantly.

Throughout his life Bob Dylan has been claimed by so many: the folk music scene, the anti-war movement… They have all tried to define him as one of them (just look at how angry people got when he "went electric"). But he has never wanted to be defined or felt comfortable in that role. In one clip from a press conference he is asked the question of whether he sees himself as primarily a singer or a poet and he responds by saying that he actually sees himself "more as a song and dance man." This gets a big laugh, but it’s also very indicative of his real, almost animosity, towards any kind of type-casting.

To be honest, I don't know if he could even define himself. There are many moments throughout the film where Dylan seems to contradict something he had said previously about his music, his lyrics, his life, the meaning behind things he has said and done, etc... At times it felt like he was just making stuff up and being contradictory on purpose.

Genius, poet, shy, singer, rebel, song writer, voice of a generation, song and dance man... Bob Dylan is all that and more and No Direction Home is an excellent exploration of the man that will both answer questions and bring up many more - just as it should.