Reader’s Digest India – August 2019

(Conjuring the)

Rolling Thunder

Revue: A Bob Dylan

Story by Martin

Scorsese

REVIEW

ON THE NETFLIX MENU,

you’ll find the wrong title

for this film. It is missing

an important first word:

‘Conjuring’, which ap-

pears after jerky footage

of the magician-film-

maker Georges Méliès

performing a trick. It’s

the first pointer to the

legerdemain in the

‘pseudo-documentary’

we are about to see.

(Conjuring the) Roll-

ing Thunder Revue: A

Bob Dylan Story by Mar-

tin Scorsese unfolds like

a concert film about

Dylan’s 1975 Rolling

Thunder tour, which

aimed at making the

singer and his troupe

(plus celebrity guests)

accessible to small-town

America. But this is also

a sleight-of-hand exer-

cise where fiction and

fact merge. For instan-

ce, the story that actress

Sharon Stone tells about

her meeting with Dylan

as a 17-year-old—that’s

made up. You probably

won’t realize this unless

you are steeped in Dy-

lanology, or unless you

have read up on the film.

But one is left with a

mild suspicion that this

material didn’t need

such a convoluted fra-

ming story. We have

already had so many

ironical/meta perspec-

tives on Dylan that one

yearns for a straight

documentary with

authentic behind-the-

scenes footage. Happily,

there is a lot of that too.

Dylan sitting with Allen

Ginsberg at Jack Ker-

ouac’s grave, playing a

harmonium. Patti Smith

telling a goofy story. Joni

Mitchell asserting that

she deserves to be taken

as seriously as male

songwriters. Joan Baez

dressing up as Dylan.

And there are the per-

formances. The most

hypnotic scenes include

the one where we see a

complete performance

of ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna

Fall’, with no cutaways,

or Dylan performing a

snarling version of ‘Isis’.

That’s where the real

magic of this film lies.

A Magical

Conjuring

By Jai Arjun Singh

Reader’s Digest

Joan Baez

(left) and

Dylan

performing

on the

Rolling

Thunder

tour

ne

tf

lix

120 august 2019