Dylan in the Movies

It may have tak­en decades for Bob Dylan to receive Acad­e­my-bait biopic treat­ment, but final­ly it hap­pened. A Com­plete Unknown is James Mangold’s film about Dylan’s West Vil­lage ascen­sion in the ear­ly 1960s, with Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met star­ring behind the shades as Dylan.

The fact that the only oth­er Dylan biopic — Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There (2007) — employed six dif­fer­ent actors to play the cen­tral role sug­gests the size of Chalamet’s task: Dylan is com­plete­ly sui gener­is, the meta­mor­phic nature of his career mark­ing him as an artist impos­si­ble to define or depict. Do you play him as the earnest young folk singer of his debut album, or the flayed Rim­baud fig­ure of Blonde on Blonde only four years lat­er, with Dylan juiced up on amphet­a­mines and a ​“thin, wild mer­cury sound” to him?

I’m Not There gets around this part­ly by using a child actor (Mar­cus Carl Franklin) and an androg­y­nous Cate Blanchett along­side the more ​“cor­rect” Dylan stand-ins (e.g. Ben Whishaw), an approach that apt­ly mir­rors the many char­ac­ters Dylan has styled through­out his life, both in his career as a singer-song­writer and on the big screen too.

If Haynes’ film is sym­bol­is­tic and for­mal­ly dar­ing, A Com­plete Unknown appears to be more in the mode of the rote, bor­ing music biopic, and while I can’t con­fess to hav­ing seen it, from what I can glean from pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als, Cha­la­met hits all the phys­i­cal beats while also look­ing like some­one has dressed their child as Bob Dylan for Hal­loween. Dylan him­self has vouched for Chalamet’s cast­ing, though, and in a post on X hint­ed at the muta­bil­i­ty that his stand-in will have to strive for: ​“I’m sure he’s going to be com­plete­ly believ­able as me. Or a younger me. Or some oth­er me.”

Cha­la­met said he was unfa­mil­iar with Dylan when approached for the project, but has since been con­vert­ed to the ​“Church of Bob”. It’s doubt­less that part of this con­ver­sion would’ve involved study­ing the many incar­na­tions of Dylan in the Movies, then, king of which is D. A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (1967), which cap­tures Dylan on tour in Eng­land in 1965, his last out­ing as a pure­ly acoustic act.

Billed as, var­i­ous­ly, a con­cert-film and a doc­u­men­tary, Don’t Look Back is both things and nei­ther, with only seg­ments of Dylan’s live per­for­mances includ­ed and the fran­tic back­stage footage more akin to a Hard Day’s Night (1964) than fac­tu­al reportage. Dylan isn’t act­ing per se, but he is play­ing him­self, or at least this ver­sion of him­self: skin­ny and sullen behind sun­glass­es, all in black, blessed with emer­gent genius and supe­ri­or because. This is still the quin­tes­sen­tial Dylan iconography.

Whether it’s one-upping an awestruck Dono­van, or stop­ping a rau­cous room-par­ty to demand that who­ev­er threw a glass out of the win­dow make them­selves known, Dylan is very much giv­ing a per­for­mance in Don’t Look Back. He would do this again in the doc­u­men­tary form, most recent­ly for Mar­tin Scors­ese in Rolling Thun­der Revue (2019), a seem­ing­ly straight­for­ward talk­ing-head doc in the man­ner of No Direc­tion Home (2005). It’s only on clos­er inspec­tion that Rolling Thun­der is revealed to be full of Dylan’s lies and leg-pulls, not least the inser­tion of the Revue’s ​“direc­tor”, a tell-all inter­vie­wee on the face of it but actu­al­ly a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter played by an actor.

But what about Dylan’s own fic­tion­al per­for­mances, of which there are a hand­ful, scat­tered among the many lives he has both lived and invent­ed on screen? First off, there’s his turn as Alias (the name is no coin­ci­dence), a small part in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Gar­rett & Bil­ly the Kid (1973), for which Dylan wrote the sound­track. It’s com­mon opin­ion that Dylan is ​“bad” in Pat Gar­rett. And while that may be true of the tech­ni­cal qual­i­ty of his per­for­mance, it remains that you can’t help but look for him when he’s not there. Peck­in­pah him­self felt this, enlarg­ing Dylan’s role from an unmem­o­rable mem­ber of Billy’s gang to a mer­cu­r­ial news­pa­per­man who fol­lows The Kid around (the idea being that Alias would lat­er tell Billy’s tale, weav­ing fic­tions and print­ing the myth).

Accord­ing­ly, the cam­era cuts to Dylan when it doesn’t make sense to, an effect that catch­es both view­er and actor off guard, Dylan jerky and awk­ward, his speech lit­tered with ​“uh’s”, his eyes (“blue as robin’s eggs”, per Joan Baez) blaz­ing out from beneath the brim of a cow­boy hat. His com­po­si­tions may motor the movie, but Dylan’s per­plex­ing per­for­mance (his key scene has him read out the labels of bean cans) fur­ther inflects it with a mourn­ful unknowa­bil­i­ty. It’s a slim role, but Dylan exudes enough enig­ma to make it stick.

He is less suc­cess­ful for Richard Mar­quand in Hearts of Fire (1987), play­ing co-lead in a film released at time of cre­ative stand­still for Dylan, just out of his Chris­t­ian run of albums and yet to be reborn again with Oh Mer­cy in 1989. Sport­ing a touch of mus­tard-yel­low in his curls, Dylan mum­bles his way through a film only avail­able on YouTube and best left there.

Of much more impor­tance is Masked and Anony­mous (2003), which Dylan co-wrote with Lar­ry Charles, who also directs, shoot­ing it like it’s a hostage video. The film was dis­par­aged upon release, and its rep­u­ta­tion has only slight­ly improved with Let­ter­boxd and time — it’s now con­sid­ered a curio! While it’s true that the film has a low­down look and dia­logue that proves ​“only Dylan can do Dylan” — in oth­er peo­ples’ mouths his words can seem shal­low — its sup­posed demer­its are actu­al­ly the things that most rec­om­mend it: its inscrutabil­i­ty and ill-advised­ness, as well as its deter­mi­na­tion to describe a New Weird Amer­i­ca (to para­phrase Greil Mar­cus). Best of all, Masked and Anony­mous is like a Dylan song come to life: uncon­cerned with pass­ing fash­ion and com­plete­ly out of time.

Dylan osten­si­bly plays the lead, his Jack Fate a washed-up midlist rock star who makes a return for a ben­e­fit con­cert in a coun­try run by a per­vert­ed dic­ta­tor. Dylan looks phys­i­cal­ly uncom­fort­able in front of the cam­era, an era away from the rest­less ener­gy he showed on stage and film dur­ing the Rolling Thun­der tour, which he cap­tured hun­dreds of hours of and turned into Renal­do and Clara (1978). That rest­less­ness is still there in Masked and Anony­mous, but he reserves it for his face, which squints and slants and nev­er stills. Beneath it, his body looks like it’s stuck on inhale. You start to won­der if the rea­son Dylan speaks in clipped apho­rism, rarely ever putting mul­ti­ple sen­tences togeth­er, is so that the cam­era can slew away and he can breathe again. He does, at least, have the good sense to sur­round him­self with an absolute­ly stacked cast of A‑List and respect­ed actors, many of whom took pay cuts to work with Dylan.

Despite this, Dylan is odd­ly mov­ing in Masked and Anony­mous. He has a great face for star­ing rue­ful­ly out of win­dows while his own mas­ter­pieces play, and in the film’s musi­cal set pieces you see the thrill of his artistry blow away the ama­teur aspects of his per­for­mance style, which at worst is wood­en but at best wouldn’t look out of place in Twin Peaks: The Return, a Lynch link backed up by crit­ic Will Sloan, who calls Masked and Anony­mous Dylan’s Inland Empire, ​“a state of the union of Bob Dylan’s subconscious.”

Robert Zim­mer­man. Arthur Rim­baud. Alias. Jack Fate: Bob Dylan has played many parts and many peo­ple. Mis­di­rec­tion, unknowa­bil­i­ty, masks, myths: these are his modes, and his long his­to­ry in the movies sug­gests it as an art form per­fect for his pro­tean wiles, shapeshift­ing with the medi­um, always busy being born. ​“Who are you?” some­one asks ear­ly on in Pat Gar­rett. It’s a good question.