Bob Dylan and Maria Callas hit the big screens and streaming options
The Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown opened on December 25 and I was swept away. The New York Times recommended The Other Side of the Mirror documentary and I understood the impact of Dylan, viscerally, for the first time.
I am 71, so I wasn’t sentient enough in 1961 when he first emerged. In the documentary a participant discussed hearing “Hey Mr. Tamborine Man” for the first time, and how mind-blowing that was. Since Bob Dylan seems like he was always part of my soundtrack, I don’t remember hearing him the first time.
I do remember a party where the host played The Beatles’ White Album, and I was so entranced by a couple of tracks I bought the record the next day. I was a teenager who liked cool songs. I didn’t have a critic’s ear or a musician’s training to understand what I was listening to.
The Other Side of the Mirror is viewed without narration as if an audience member at the festival. The movie shows three years of Bob Dylan’s appearances at the Newport Folk Festival — 1963, 64, and 65. He is a newbie and naif in the first year; by the third appearance he is weary from his rocket ship to fame, the storm of fans, and the expectations placed on him.
I didn’t know Bob Dylan had to face the same intrusiveness of fans we see in the footage from the Beatles. I can also see the seriousness and the box of folk music, the pattern from old music forms, why Bob Dylan admired Woody Guthrie’s individualism and the confessional songwriting Dylan developed. He found his way as a person and artist. Recent biopics and documentaries have helped me emotionally understand the roots of rock and roll. They included blues, black music (race records), folk music, the viewpoint of British/non-Americans, the contributions of singer-songwriters, electrification, and technical developments.
I am dumbfounded that Dylan wrote so prolifically in his early 20’s, and wrote amazing lyrics at that age. The lyrics are naive and cynical at the same time, as are the Beat poets, and dismissive of women except as romantic/sexual objects, as are the Beats and as was the culture. “It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, Babe” is at least honest.
When he sang “The times they are a-changing” the first time, he was right, they were. But they always are. We boomers thought we had discovered changing times. He can still sing that song now in his 80s.
Like Bob Dylan, I was born in Minnesota, and like Bob Dylan, I lay awake late at night with a transistor radio at my ear, listening to radio waves streaming from places south across the empty plains. When you feel like you live in the middle of nowhere, radio and other communications from the outside world are so important. They’re part of what propelled many of us to leave home. I headed to New York City, maybe because that was the story, the path.
I moved to immerse myself in art, writing, music, theater, school, and life at 22. New York City was different than in 1961, but the 70s were gritty and grinding with creativity. Buskers still played in Washington Square Park. I wasn’t laser-focused, but I did learn, experience a lot, and leave my Midwestern upbringing behind.
Later, in Minneapolis, I often drove by the bar where Dylan was said to appear occasionally, close to the farm in his brother’s name near Hanover, just west of Minneapolis. I felt like I was occupying the same spaces as Dylan, that we could pass each other. He felt smaller in Minnesota, where we don’t like people to get too big for their britches. He was there to visit family.
I did not like the impersonation of Maria Callas by Angelina Jolie in Maria. Angelina Jolie had a good physical look to play Maria Callas, but she lacked the inner fire that Maria showed. I had not realized how Maria transformed herself, and her body, to become the diva. The movie, in part, occupied the same time period as Dylan in the early 60s, two musical artists in different musical worlds.
I thought the documentary Maria by Callas better showed Callas’ artistic and personal struggles than the Jolie film.
I enjoyed that each biopic and documentary shows the drive to become what one’s talent and personal individuation propels one to be, and the barricade that fans and expectations created. Each artist strove to become authentic, and what was true to self was the continuously developing artist.
I also liked that A Complete Unknown shows the writing process of Dylan, awake in the middle of the night, and jotting down and editing lyrics. He is an introvert who needs to remove himself and write — the hard work all of us who write know and need.
The Callas movies also show her practicing. I have become committed to this part of the work — the solitary efforts to get better — and appreciate time given to this focus.
Oh yeah, both films will probably be Oscar fodder. Timothee Chalumet, the actor as Dylan, is very good, I think, but you can form your own opinion. Don’t forget the documentaries.
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