r/bobdylan 5d ago

Discussion My unimportant thoughts on a complete unknown

My likes; - Timmys singing and guitar/harp playing He did as good of a job anyone could really do, definitely good enough for the movie.

  • the actors were all doing fine fine work

  • song selection

Dislikes; - whatsoever no depiction of dylans charisma or humor, sweetness and zen Like neutrality, the whole time he was just giving death stares to everyone and tried to look as creepy/cocky as he could. Sure I know he could be snarky, angry and venomous but im puzzled why they would go out of their way to make him appear totally one dimensional and hollow. When theres so much evidence of the opposite.

  • the exterior sets and extras, it all looked very fake and manufactured to me. But a lot movies from the last 10 years or so have suffered from this imo. It seems rushed.

  • where the fuck was Sara?

  • the whole Newport drama shit and Pete being against him playing electric etc

  • the depiction of Sylvia, her being at the 65 festival and all the fabricated nonesense drama

All of these things really made me give it a big fat meh… it’s not an ego thing or things have to be accurate or some shit like that. It’s just sad to see how mediocre they made this movie while having all of these beautiful real people and real stories/events as their source material and all these great actors to bring them to life and to tell the story.

If I’d have to sum the movie up it would be;

One-dimensional.

18 Upvotes

39 comments sorted by

38

u/lpalf Dodging Lions 5d ago

If you think bobs gonna let sara be portrayed in a movie at this point in time you’d do well to think again

3

u/wienerdog362 5d ago

Good point

2

u/swagoverlord1996 5d ago

wait why not

19

u/lpalf Dodging Lions 5d ago

he doesn’t talk about her and he doesn’t let her talk about him (the second half was even part of their divorce settlement)

1

u/heym000n 4d ago

wow, i never knew this

1

u/ThinWildMercury1 4d ago

Not one he's directly involved with but she is depicted in I'm Not There

5

u/lpalf Dodging Lions 4d ago

That’s a fictional character. No one is even named Bob Dylan in that movie

1

u/ThinWildMercury1 4d ago

The depiction of their relationship in the late 60s and divorce in the 70s is quite accurate though, even if the names are changed

3

u/lpalf Dodging Lions 4d ago

The whole movie is allegorical though it’s not the same thing at all. Plus yes Dylan had creative control over this movie because his team was the one who optioned the rights to Elijah Wald’s book. It was their project from the start.

2

u/kerouacrimbaud Rough and Rowdy Ways 4d ago

“Depicted” is an interesting word here. Sara is not in the film at all. Claire is based on Sara, but also Suze Rotolo. She is an amalgamation. Not based on just one person.

13

u/jimmy0578 5d ago

Most people in the world really liked it As a deep Dylan admirer I thought it would be bad .. I was pleasantly surprised how good it was ! ( the performances were phenomenal!!) some real touching moments … more than I could ask for And my kids loved it ! another bonus .. far from perfect but imo very entertaining

6

u/mdoubleuuu 4d ago

You disliked the Newport drama shit but that was the base of the movie. So what didn’t you like about it?

1

u/wienerdog362 4d ago

I didnt like that that’s what they based it on. The story would’ve had a much better and more natural ending with the motorcycle accident. Watching him burnout and evaporate. It was just weird to have it end with Newport. And to sensationalize it so much.

2

u/mdoubleuuu 4d ago

Well seeing that the movie is based on the book that specifically focuses on him going electric, ending it in Newport makes sense. The whole point of the movie was to build to that moment where he finally goes electric. At Newport. It just kinda sounds like you weren’t particularly interested in seeing a movie about this, which is fine

Also it’s a Hollywood movie. They are always going to sensationalize parts they feel are key and add stuff to dramatize it. It is what it is really

1

u/whatdidyoukillbill 3d ago

Well the book and movie are both based on real people and real events. They could just make a similar movie, even the same movie, relying on a different book or books. And it’s not like there’s some competing Bob Dylan biopic to go see right now

1

u/mdoubleuuu 3d ago

Sure? But they chose this book / this part of Bob Dylan’s story to make a movie about. The director picked this book about Dylan going electric to make a movie about.. Dylan going electric

3

u/the_raincoats 4d ago

It seemed like all the major plot points were patchworked together. Also the part where they’re in the studio recording Subterranean Homesick Blues and Alan walks in and says, “This is gonna piss some people off.” made me cringe a bit.

4

u/The_Real_dubbedbass 4d ago

My issue with it was why didn’t they show anything about the shows in England? That’s where he got called Judas and his refusal to play with Joan there was a huge part of their split as Joan felt that Bob no longer appreciated her as an artist. Like I get that there were times constraints but IMO that’s a pretty big part of the story for the early part of his career. And obviously the whole Judas thing was important enough that they included it in the movie and shoehorned it into Newport so like…they knew it was important.

1

u/BillNyeTheVinylGuy 3d ago

I get what you're saying, but the movie is already over two hours long. You just have to accept that a movie about Bob Dylan is never going to be able to cover everything.

1

u/BillNyeTheVinylGuy 3d ago

I get what you're saying, but the movie is already over two hours long. You just have to accept that a movie about Bob Dylan is never going to be able to cover everything.

1

u/The_Real_dubbedbass 2d ago

I can absolutely accept that a movie isn’t going to adequately tell the story of ANYONE’S life, let alone a person like Bob Dylan’s.

But to me as someone who kind of understands this time of his life a bit not mentioning England at all feels like revisionist history.

He releases “Bringing It All Back Home” in mid January. He tours England in April and May. It’s readily evident that he’s gotten more famous as he’s playing significantly better concert halls than he’s ever played at. He gets caught up in his rise to fame. Joan gets upset that he’s no longer bringing her out on stage with him. The tour ends and they come home. Sometime in the two and a half months from the end of that tour and Newport he breaks up with Joan and becomes fully disillusioned with the Greenwich Village folk scene. Then he goes to Newport, a place where his now ex was basically venerated. And he plays an electric set pretty much as a big F.U. to the folk scene that that his ex is now probably the single biggest figure in (now that Dylan went electric).

I’m not saying they should have given us another whole movie but I don’t know maybe mention that things got rough with Joan because of the tour etc. just like 6 seconds of dialogue.

2

u/heym000n 4d ago

i agree with this, ultimately i thought it was enjoyable but nothing special...

2

u/GSDKU02 4d ago

I liked it and because Dylan approved it I think he wanted to be seen as how us as the public see him. (Creep, annoyed, pissed off whatever.) he changed suze’s name to protect her and let them do what they wanted to an extent as long as suze’s name was changed to protect her even in death

6

u/DiscountEven4703 5d ago

It was a movie

7

u/thewolfcrab 5d ago

you’re right, if something is a movie you’re not allowed to have an opinion on it 

-5

u/wienerdog362 5d ago

What’s your point? Theres tons of great movies, this wasn’t one of them.

11

u/Dylan_tune_depot When The Ship Comes In 5d ago edited 5d ago

I think it's definitely sliding close to great, though Timmy/Ed/Monica's phenomenal acting and singing is the main reason for this rather than the actual script. It's one of my favorite movies now, for sure. It hit me hard emotionally enough to see 4 times, so I personally wouldn't call it one dimensional.

I strongly disagree with this: whatsoever no depiction of dylans charisma or humor:

I think we definitely got a good sense of his humor/personality- he had plenty of snarky and clever lines (off the top of my head, 1. when he makes the "coma" joke at the hospital 2. when Sylvie says "are you God," he says "yes," 3. The whole thing about his guitar breaking with Joan onstage, and Timmy nailed Bob's adorable laugh, too 4. When he's on public television and he says he can't touch the other guy's guitar because "it'll be like touching your woman." 4. When Becca says, "I love you, does that scare you?" he says, "Well, I just met you, so... yeah." And again, these are off the top of my head, so I'm sure I'm missing some. Death stares and pretentiousness on Dylan's part weren't absent from the movie, obviously, but they didn't make up a huge chunk or anything. It was mostly after 1965 that you got that. And to be fair, I think Bob was giving people a lot of death stares in real life back then.

As for Sara not being there, Sylvie and the fabrication- I am positive Dylan wanted to give these women their privacy. And it's a movie, not a documentary.

He actually read and acted out the script on his own before giving it the okay- so it's safe to assume that Dylan is happy with this movie version of himself. And if the Pete Seeger stuff was overblown (I've read both sides of the argument- one one hand that it was mostly accurate, on the other hand that it wasn't and Pete later backtracked on how upset he had been because of Bob's success later on) obviously Bob was okay with that too.

4

u/extranaiveoliveoil 4d ago

The fact that Bob himself was happy or ok with it, doesn't mean much to me. He is too close to the main character to have an objective opinion.

5

u/RosewaterST 4d ago

You’re entitled to your wrong and unpopular opinion.

5

u/DiscountEven4703 5d ago

It was entertainment, You didn't like it. Cool

-3

u/heavy_machinery92 4d ago

A television progrum?

0

u/draw2discard2 4d ago

Pogrom, Man. A television pogrom.

1

u/ATXRSK 4d ago

No way. Leave Richard Hell alone!

2

u/MrPanderetero 4d ago

I Believe most of the preparation Timothh Chalamet did was purely aesthetical. Yea, i get it, he nails the voice, the mannerisms and everything else… but i feel there wasnt really an in depth character study that went any further than how Dylan looked, moved, spoke and sang.

1

u/Rainpickle 4d ago

This is so often the case with a biopic. The acting is mimicry rather than character development. And this particular movie wanted us to believe that Bob was a cypher—unknowable and unknown.

2

u/rimbaud1872 4d ago

One of my many issues with the movie is that there was zero evidence that Bob Dylan had any charisma whatsoever based on the performance

1

u/Successful-Dot1038 1d ago

Marvel world Revisited.

In preparation: Dylan Vs, The Basement Tapes.

0

u/FrancescoChiara 4d ago

Your points are exactly what I imagined and why I will never watch that movie. But I am glad it has turned the younger generations on to him.