Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese

In what's a documentary that's sure to delight diehard Bob Dylan fans, Rolling Thunder Revue sees esteemed director Martin Scorsese once more delve into the life and times of the beloved folk superstar after his previous 2005 effort No Direction Home, with Scorsese this time choosing to focus on a very particular time and place in the music legends life in the mid 1970's.

It's important to note, Revue is very far from a straightforward documentary, with Scorsese curiously choosing to install into his film fake characters, misleading footage and potentially fake information as he takes an unorthodox approach in examining Dylan and his large cohort of offsiders journey across America as they played numerous shows in an effort to connect more with smaller audiences in more emotionally intimate gigs.

Scorsese's reasoning behind his trickery, that may not even at first be that apparent is never really explained and its off-putting to say the least as you begin to realise that despite extensive polished footage from this tour, Revue is not at all interested in providing us with the cold hard facts or anything of much substance as it instead flies by thanks to its wonderful time capsule like footage that transports us back to a time and place in American history where the country was healing from the wounds of the Vietnam war and the "hippy" movement was finding itself in a transitional stage of its life.

The footage that Scorsese and his team have managed to polish up and utilise for Revue is truly stunning and thanks to the intimate nature of much of the documents of the tour, we as an audience are literally transported to the stage Dylan inhabits and for anyone that has ever called themselves even a minor fan of Dylan's works, Revue will be like opening a treasure chest of the very best of the esteemed poet/singer.

All of Dylan's most well-known songs are here and Scorsese isn't afraid to let them take centre place in this documentary, as the films near two and half hour runtime is loaded with more concert footage than you could dare dream to see and while this is a sure-fire way to please fans of Dylan's particular brand of musical musings and instantly recognisable voice, for more casual fans or those along more for the cultural insight, Revue will begin to wear a little thin around the half way mark with Scorsese indulging his Dylan love to an arguably more self-indulgent manner that will alienate more casual watchers.

It's safe to say that Revue really is a film best enjoyed by Dylan fans as it appears set to be one of the more divisive Scorsese films ever made, most surely one of the most experimental and odd, and in a career littered with not only great fictional films but emotional and insightful documentaries such as The Last Waltz or Living in a Material World, Revue ends up being a mostly cold and rather forgettable experience.

Final Say -

With its odd mix of fact, fiction, archival footage and doctored narrative, Rolling Thunder Revue is an odd experience that will be a favourite amongst Dylan fans and one that gets by for the rest of us thanks to its amazingly captured 1970's footage.

2 ½ face masks out of 5

Documentaries are usually not my cup of tea. And Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019) is sadly one of them, with an annoying alternance of live performances of Bob Dylan (yes!!!) on the first hand, and monologues or conversations as superficial as pointless (no, no and no!) on the second hand. This is probably reserved for hardcore and unconditional fans of « Bob Dylan + Martin Scorsese », no matter what. For instance, we learn that Bob Dylan smokes with, I quote, an « European style », thanks to a John Doe. Really ?!!? Just missing a scene during which Bob Dylan reads an antique phone book, with a female blonde carefully listening and concluding with « that's interesting ». In fact, this scene almost exists: Bob Dylan discusses about mental marriage with a woman who obviously wants something more than this discussion. Thus, I gave up after 30 minutes and I left this documentary in background music despite the appalling blah-blah-blah. As a synthesis: not for me, and, a posteriori, a cd or a live Blu-Ray of Bob Dylan would have been undoubtedly a better choice.

Stories told about Bob Dylan are almost as old as the man himself and it will not be me who claims to unravel the real from the unreal or the interesting from the uninteresting. In the same way there will be many arguing for what is so or not so in this wondrous extravaganza, but it will not be me. The original footage included here is of far higher quality, both technically and artistically, than we had any right to expect and if it is woven imaginatively, so much the better. I don't recall Dylan ever looking as animated as here on stage, nor perhaps as consistently happy but more importantly knocking out the songs so very well. This is a fantastic (even if possibly fantastical) film which I enjoyed from beginning to end and if someone wants to pick apart the Sharon Stone or Hurricane sequences, let them I don't care. No fan of Bob Dylan will not want to see this. No fan of Bob Dylan will (or at least should) be disappointed with this extremely well made tribute to the man and record of a certain time.

I found this Martin Scorsese 'story on film' as a Criterion Collection DVD at my public library. It apparently originated as a Netflix production.

I am pretty close to contemporary of the musicians profiled here, I am just 4 years younger than Dylan. I of course remember him well but I never really cared for his music. I was not, and am not, a fan.

Still, I really enjoyed this documentary. In 1975 Bob Dylan, his musicians, and some of his friends embarked on what they named the 'Rolling Thunder Review.' Why that name? Someone had described a series of thunder sounds during a storm as rolling thunder and Dylan just liked that name, nothing more significant than that, they explain.

The participants, in the end, thought the tour was very successful, it was fun and it allowed them to share their poetry and music with many. But financially, it was not. They played in mostly smaller venues and often receipts were not sufficient to cover the expenses.

Bob Dylan always drove the bus from site to site, at least that is what is depicted. He and Joan Baez were in their mid-30s and had a very close relationship, and loved to harmonize in song.

My favorite was Scarlet Rivera who, on the tour, was called The Queen of Swords. She was a marvelous violinist and was part of the band, often standing adjacent to Dylan as she played her accompaniment.

There are several fictional stories included, the most interesting involves Sharon Stone meeting Dylan when she was still a teenager, and joined the tour. Not as a musician but she just did odd jobs, all this before she started her acting career. And we find out, it was all fiction. Dylan and Stone never met back then.

I admit, I used the fast-forward through most of the Dylan performances, his singing just grates on my nerves. But that didn't take away from the overall impact of the film, really enjoyable to "peek behind the curtain" during those years that I was starting my own career and my children were being born in 1969 through 1976.

As "Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese" (2019 release; 142 min.) opens, Dylan is performing Mr. Tambourine Man solo. We go to today's Dylan, who claims "This was so long ago, I don't recall a thing. I wasn't even born!". At this point we are 10 minutes into the movie.

Couple of comments: this is directed by longtime Dylan admirer Martin Scorsese. Here he brings a work of mostly fiction, although of course the concert footage is real. You may recall that during the 1975 Rolling Thunder Review, Dylan filmed a ton of footage, which eventually was released as "Renaldo and Clara" in early 1978 (more on that later). Basically Scorsese was handed the unused footage and told "do with it what you want". As if Scorsese would decline that opportunity! While they are of course very different films (and thankfully this one doesn't run 4 hours, which was the original running time of "Renaldo and Clara"), there are clear parallels between the two. In then end, "Rolling Thunder Review" also rambles quite a bit, and I found it of most interest for the concert footage, and the current interviews (all fictional). Nevertheless this is really a "must-see" for any and all Dylan fans. Now almost 50 years later, this footage is most interesting from a historical perspective. (I remember seeing "Renaldo and Clara" with a buddy of mine in a movie theater in London in the summer of 1978, and we were just dumbstruck about it. Can't recall if we stayed for the entire 4 hour showing.)

"Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese" was released on Netflix in 2019, bypassing theaters altogether. I didn't have Netflix in 2019, and only recently stumbled on it. Please note that this is currently rated 93% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and for good reason. Of course don't take my word for it. If you like Dylan, and in particular his Rolling Thunder era (including his vastly underrated 1976 album "Desire"), I'd readily suggest you check this out and draw your own conclusion.