Customer Reviews
Just a pawn in their game - By: Lancebastion, 19 Sep 2007 
No Direction home is a documentary over 2 discs charting the rise of Bob Dylan & his affect on music & the world.
Disc 1 is somewhat harder to watch, spending a lot of time talking to other musicians about the music scenein general, lots of live footage of other bands & not enough Dylan. While it is interesting it's more a history of folk music than a Dylan documentary.
Disc 2 follows on but features Dylan far more closely. The documentary includes a vast amount of archive footage that is fascinating to watch. Everything builds until Dylan eventually introduces electric performances to his sets & his fans cry out against him.
I have watched these discs & have a much greater appreciation for Dylan as a songwriter & performer.
Compelling, but a sleight of hand - By: Sverdlov, 09 Nov 2006 
Undoubtedly a rivetting watch, but when pondered later then some doubts creep in. Scorsese is a great film-maker, a weaver of stories & impressions. I'm not sure about his capacity as a documentary-maker. Does he get to the heart of Dylanin these seminal years? Does he confront - & take a view on - the contentious issues surrounding Dylanin these years? In many ways he sidesteps them. Instead, he focuses on the musical millieuin which Dylan lived, but by over-emphasising influences, he downplays Dylan's own creative genius. Am I the only one who thinks there was far too much Liam Clancyin part 1, & far too little original Dylan? I share the point made by another reviewer that it would have been good to have got complete performances. I was hoping Scorsese might have unearthed some remnant of Dylan's first BBC appearance,in the play 'Madhouse on Castle Street'. There was instead far too much of some pretty annoying performers, especiallyin part one. The piece avoided taking sides on the issues raised by early biographies like Scaduto's - the accusations of people at the time that the young Dylan was pretty ruthless, & that the protest phase was a piece of cynical careerism. I don't agree with that view - but it would have been good to have had it refuted. Actually, we got very little on Dylan the person - OK, I don't want an expose of sordid tittle-tattle, but it's remarkable that Sara Dylan never got a mention. Of course, one might argue that it was all about the music; but if that's the case, it seemed to be obsessed with the 1966 live material lifted from Eat the Document & its out-takes - as I recall it, there was not a single mention of Blonde on Blonde. This is an amazing omission, given that it appears on everyone's listsin the top five of greatest ever rock albums. Yet it's not mentioned!!
The comments by Dylan were wonderful to hear - when have we ever seen him so relaxed & apparently straightin his comments? A suitable follow-up to the incredible Chronicles vol 1. But even then ... Dylan was interviewed by Jeff Rosen, from his entourage & very much a protector of the 'image', not by Scorsese, & again some of the key questions don't get answered.
Overall, extremely watchable, but frustratingin parts. Good to hear from the late Allen Ginsberg: a little more from Joan Baez, Bobby Neuwirth, surviving members of the Band, a little less from Liam Clancy, would have made it even better. And how about complete footage of those 1966 gigs (and how about the 1965 BBC-TV show. Did they wipe it????)
Scorsese's Dylan - By: Phillip Kay, 21 Oct 2006 
Martin Scorsese's film No Direction Home, which I watched last night, provided an absorbing three & a half hours of insight into Bob Dylan's early life & his emergence into prominence & controversyin the mid sixties. I mention the duration of the movie because I can rarely sit & watch for so long without my attention wandering. Notin this film. Before remarking on the content of the film, it is worth considering Scorsese's direction. I recommend this film to anyone interestedin watching orin making documentary film. The wayin which archival material, concert footage & interview segments are integrated & paced is masterly. The film really tells a story & creates an atmosphere: I felt as though I was there. Scorsese's experiencein making feature films has enriched his direction of this film. Although comparisons are silly, it may be his best film. It sent me back to The Last Waltz for comparison of his method.
The film's most valuable asset is Dylan's own recounting of his past, & the most striking point about it is how much interview timein Dylan's early years was wastedin asking often trite questions of this most intuitive mind. He rarely answered them, & often could only express his irritation of the questioner. Scorsese's film of the contemporary Dylan rarely presents the questions, content to record what he has to say. Hibbing, Minnesota is stripped bare. Even Dylan's evasiveness, when dealing with his more questionable behaviour to friends & colleagues, is revealing. There is a conflict between Scorsese's intention to make a coherent narrative & Dylan's lifelong habit of crossing borders & categories, throwing dust on his trail & refusing to be pigeonholed that adds an interesting tension to the viewing.
The main thrust of Scorsese's film is the impact of Dylan's crossover to electric instrumental accompaniment. Listeners then had become divided into self perceived groups, the folk 'purist', social conscience type & the mindless consumers of pop pap who just enjoyed the music, & Dylan outraged everyone by moving between these groups freely. His motives were neither pure nor particularly self aware. From the perspective of our own times the differences between these types of music seem less extreme: both were commercial entertainment; listening to a protest song was often a substitute for more committed action. Yet at the time the difference was important to those who were there. From the conflict that ensured, the boos & the cries of traitor, there would emerge something newin pop culture, the pop music artist, & Scorsese doesn't let us forget it. One disadvantage to this emphasis is that it focuses on the same period & phenomenon as Pennebaker's Don't Look Back, which is even quotedin Scorsese's film. The Pennebaker film (a masterpiece) has been available on DVD for some time, & most watchers of No Direction Home would be familiar with it (note the similar inspiration between the two titles).
The film reveals Dylan's background, & then moves on to an overview of the music he grew up listening to, from Hank Williams to Muddy Waters, fascinating to those interestedin developmentsin popular music. The society of Dylan's youth is sketchedin vividly: Cold War, Greenwich Village, the folk music scene, the civil rights movement, the birth of folk-rock. The controversy over Dylan's move to electric instrumentsin the mid 60s is shown through concert footage. We see the Dylan who found, used & then dropped Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez & many others. One comment, that Dylan was like a sponge, reminded me of a similar comment about George Gershwin, who absorbed, or 'stole' elements from all the popular cultures of his time. But transformed them. This was the Dylan who became, unexpectedly, a pop star, who poured out a stream of literate, introspective pop lyrics which made pop culture 'respectable' to the intellectuals & had a transforming effect on the way popular music was presented by other artists. In a way Dylan could be said to have re-invented pop musicin this period.
So, everyone has his Dylan. In the 60s Dylan was for some The Genius; for others he was The Poet; for others again he was The Traitor. These are all projections of our own that tell us what we are looking for. No wonder Dylan dodged like crazy. Today if you become a star you deal with it by making it a persona, or you self destruct by taking it all seriously. Dylan survived because he had many personas. This film is Scorsese's Dylan. We'll never know Dylan's Dylan.
Scorsese's film covers the period 1941 to 1968, when Dylan suffered injuriesin a motor cycle accident when he was about 26 years old. Therefore the film does not deal with a lot of important things about Dylan: his marriage & family; his influence on popular music, especially on the Beatles; the literary value of his song lyrics & his stature as probably the greatest of popular song writers; his use, even quite latein his career, of traditional melodies (which is common folk practice); the creation of country rock; the disintegration & self healing recorded on Blood on the Tracks; his various religious affiliations; & his non musical activities such as paintings & novels. If anyone reading this knows Martin Scorsese would they ask if a second film is going to be made covering this material? Probably the elusive Dylan would consider it too defining & completing a study to be madein his lifetime, but you can only ask.
Great In Places But It's Hard To See The Wood Through The Trees - By: Jervis, 28 Aug 2006 In many ways 'No Direction Home' is great. There are wonderful & informative interviews (even with Bob himself) & the story is richly detailed though there is little reallyin the way of real critical debate.
The main problem is there is so much detail about people & events that are peripheral to the main storyline it becomes increasingly difficult to get a grasp on the main outline of the eventsin the life & times of Bob himself. This is particuarly truein the first half of the film which seems like a jumble as many less than important features (such as a clip of Johnnie Ray) are shownin an effort to show every aspect be it musical influence, or the introduction of an acquaintancein an attempt to fully encompass every aspect relating to Bob. It would have been far better to just concentrate on the basics with the aid of a narrator for a clearer guideline to the essential points.
For all its detail however there's never a mention of Bob's birthplace Duluth.
Near the end of the first part & for the whole of the second part of the film things begin to settle down somewhat & we are left with a wonderful tribute to Bob which is a pleasure to behold. The clips from the 1966 British tour are truly wonderful - it's just a pity those clips aren'tin full.
To get a greater/more effective film overall an awful lot of pruning is required.
Sometimes to tell a story simply is a more effective route to take.
Two Most Popular Arts: Music and Film - By: Kenneth J. Ward, 15 Aug 2006 One word to describe Dylan's music whilst on his infamous steam-roller-roller-coaster tour of 1966 is raw. Raw as Dylan's harmonica solos of the early sixties, raw as his folknik hero's appearance of those ealry acoustic days, & raw as the gathering of seemingly endless information on his transition from folk to rock madein this monumental piece of "rockumentary".
If one listens to the music today from that tour on the "Bootleg Series: Volume Four" CD, the painful rawness still affects them as profoundly as if they were the people cheeringin the background, or even quite possibly as if they were the man who called out "Judas!" to preceed an unrivalled rendition of Like a Rolling Stone. "No Direction Home", he bellows outin the chorus line, as whiny as his folk-singing days & containing all the quickly gathered wisdom & maturity he held by this point.
Here is a mapping (not neccessarily a chronological mapping) of everything which contributed to that maturing which brought about the greatest song-writer & lyricist of modern times. This - amidst stiff & infinite competition - is without doubt the most comprehensive analysis of Dylan's early years ever created.
The streaming & open-hearted interviews with Dylan are as insightful as anything to be found concerning the artist. Other interviews with people who knew him from when he arrivedin New York Cityin the early Sixties provide added depth to this, & viewers end the mammoth film star-stricken by the regular appearances from other acclaimed & famous artists & poets such as Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Liam Clancy & Alen Ginsberg.
This is a must-see for any Dylan fan, & indeed anyone with a genuine interestin music of any era.
