User reviews

My ex and I saw Bob Dylan perform in 1984, a superb concert. My ex was and is a huge fan of his and as he doesn't own a TV (yes really!) I invited him to pop over and watch this on Netflix. The music is of course fabulous, Desire is my favourite Dylan album so it was a treat to hear so much from it. On the whole we both really enjoyed this. For me, the highlights were Bob and Allen Ginsberg at Jack Kerouac's graveside. his interactions with Joan Baez (where they are talking about each marrying other people - wow), Scarlet Rivera (so talented) and the section about Ruben 'Hurricane' Carter. However, I wasn't too impressed with the fake present-day interviews. I felt they were distracting from the main event which for me was the footage from 1975 and the real interviews. This made my ex-husbands Father's Day mind, I'm sure he went home to listen to some of his vast Dylan music collection.

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.

Some observations:

• The quality of the sound was great
• If you fast-forward to "Isis", you won't miss anything. Patti Smith didn't come across well at all. (You don't have to watch this film very carefully to see evidence of drug use. Probably including acid.)
• The "Desire" album, which is one of my favourites, was a work in progress at the time of the tour. The majority of the songs on it are in the film. ("Joey" and "Sara" didn't make the cut.) "Hurricane" was one of the musical highlights.
• Other musical highlights: "When I Paint My Masterpiece", "Simple Twist of Fate", Dylan doing an acoustic version of "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" before an audience of Indians, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", and Joni Mitchell rehearsing "Coyote" (a favourite song of mine) with Roger McGuinn and Dylan, in Gordon Lightfoot's apartment, no less.
• Speaking of Mitchell, she and Joan Baez developed a strong dislike of each other during the tour. The film didn't go into this.
• Some non-musical highlights: I never saw an interview of Ruben "Hurricane" Carter before. Ronnie Hawkins was his usual funny self. Dylan's present-day comments were great. He often refuses to stay on topic during interviews, but not this time.
• I'm a big fan of McGuinn, so I would have like to have seen more of him. However, fans of Eric Anderson, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Mick Ronson, and T-Bone Burnett would feel the same way. If Scorsese said, "there wasn't enough time", he could have removed most of the interviews with non-musicians in the film, and nobody would have minded.

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.

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.

Not a Dylan fan, but.like lots of his songs covered by various artists. This film is brilliant. It makes me see what a great artist Dylan is. Good job by Scorsese

I am a huge Bob Dylan fan. All of it. This era in particular. The choice of songs and variety of musicians was so unique and brilliant. The glaring omission of Mick Ronson is unforgivable. They don't even mention his name a single time! His guitar work during this tour provides a constant swirling tapestry of melody, solos, and originality that deserves a documentary on its own. Shame on Bob. RIP Mick!

The music and footage is great and could stand on its own. The rest as many have mentioned is pretentious drivel.

Just turn the subtitle on so you can read Bob Dylan's amazing poetry while he is performing

Brilliant live stuff but too much fake to make it to a 10.

Brilliant ,but a little less of Alan Ginsberg would have been better!

Well done Mr Dylan and Mr Scorsese This opened up a side of Dylan that I was unaware of.

This is going to be a load of bobbins, isn't it? If it's not mostly pretentious arty nonsense in which I have absolutely no interest, I'm going to be amazed. And, for extra added annoyance, it's going to have Bob in it.

Oh yes, it very much is mostly pretentious arty nonsense in which Bob features quite a lot. Ostensibly it follows Bob's Rolling Thunder Revue tour which played 57 concerts in '75/'76 in smaller venues in smaller towns to help him connect with his audience and featured a load of other musicians (it must have been a logistical nightmare). But the film kinda sprawls in whatever direction it feels like - other "highlights" include Allen Ginsberg "dancing" (there's a lot of "dancing" going on throughout the film) and Patti Smith with some, well, I'm not entirely what it was - poetry?

But I do have to admit that I found the concert footage more interesting (and higher quality) than I was expecting, particularly the stuff with Joan Baez in where her voice softens Bob's rough edges nicely. I'm not entirely clear why he paints his face white half the time - I suspect I wouldn't understand if it was explained to me. I also enjoyed the bits with Joni Mitchell and Scarlet Rivera in - I wasn't aware of Scarlet beforehand and she's a very interesting character and a fine violinist to boot.

However - when reading up about the film halfway through watching it, things got considerably weirder...

(I should warn you that spoilers follow - although there's a definite discussion to be had as to whether they spoil or improve the film)

The film is a mix of vintage tour footage and talking-head shots, both from the time and reminiscing from the current day. However, some of the tour footage and characters are fictionalised and some of the current day talking-head footage (including from Bob) refers to the fictionalised footage/characters as though they actually happened/existed. It also features quite a few clips of Sharon Stone reminiscing about her time with Bob on the tour - none of which happened in the slightest. WHAT?!? Why would you do that?!?

I'm guessing it's some kind of metaphysical comment on the relationship between memory and reality but, to be honest, it feels a bit of a silly idea. It actually made me question whether anything I was seeing was real - maybe that was the intended outcome? I also think if I really cared about Dylan and/or the tour, then maybe I'd feel they weren't treating it with the respect it deserved. There's no doubt they blend reality and fiction well though - I had no idea it was happening until I read about it.

I really didn't need 140 minutes of it - but let's be honest, I'd probably be complaining if there was 14 minutes of it. I didn't hate it though, but I did find most of it pretty boring and I found the whole fictionalisation thing a very odd choice. However, I liked seeing some of the famous faces of the time popping up and, as previously mentioned, I found some of the concert footage a lot more enjoyable than I expected. It has however made me keener to watch The Last Waltz - another Scorsese film featuring Bob.

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

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.

10/10 for the music - Bob at his best, playing his finest songs in a savage, ramshackle manner that he has never bettered, before or since. Isis is phenomenal, visually as well as musically - Bob stomping around blowing into an all-but-inaudible harmonica while the band cooks up an absolute storm - and Hurricane (though subsequently revealed to be lyrically naïve, the actual wordplay and use of language is stunning) is an angry noisefest, Bob appearing to glare at violinist Scarlet Rivera (who also plays a blinder) between lines as though SHE represented the legal system. That's just a couple of nuggets. However...I listened patiently to the dialogue between songs, I sat through the explanation about the documentary maker, Sharon Stone's involvement, etc, just thinking "OK, but when's the next song?" - only to find that it was all Scorsese's idea of a joke. Marty, if you're going to hoax us, make it a funny hoax. This was like something the irritating office comedian would do, to no-one's amusement. Bob - next time hire Marti di Bergi, not Martin Scorsese.

First of all I'd like to say that the Dylan concert clips are absolutely fantastic. Simple Twist Of Fate was almost spine tingling. They did a great job of restoring them and that's what makes this well worth it. But there were so many times it was almost like Dylan was providing the soundtrack to a Ginsberg biography. This thing gets lost in its own self sometimes. I realize that Ginsberg was a part of Dylan's existence at that time, and a lot of other people's as well, but I could have gone for three times more Dylan and ten times less Ginsberg. All in all it's a really good look at that period of Dylan's life and career. If you can sit through the Ginsberg stuff then you're really going to like this.

Brought back many memories of a special time. Bob just kinda shows up and things happen. The movie was a collection of various on stage and off stage moments held together with commentary by folks that were there including Mr. Zimmerman. I have the feeling that these folks were completely stoned and just kinda drifted along during this tour. Dylan fans would like this film. If you can't name 10 of his songs don't bother.

I mean, the subtitles - I used the EN ones - are left on the bottom of the screen when the people's names are shown in the same area, covering them: quite amateurish and cheap, IMO.

The doc is valuable as a piece of Bob Dylan history. Otherwise there isn't anything really special that will strongly captivate you. In the description I was reading how it is a portrait of America in the mid-seventies and that the Revue takes us on a tour of the economically depressed towns and cities of America, a country that is shell-shocked from the Vietnam War. In reality, you don't see much of the towns and cities the tour passes through, just glimpses. You get to meet a lot of the folks in the traveling show but they don't quite come fully to life. The camera just isn't capturing a hell of a lot. There is plenty of music, so it does function as a concert movie. And I hate to sound negative, but I just don't care for Dylan's band's sound on this tour. (Although I overall like Dylan's recordings quite a bit). I'm not saying the movie is not worthwhile; it just had nothing particularly exciting which I was hoping it would. Probably the best parts are the interview segments, dispersed throughout, with the 70-something Dylan reflecting on the tour 40 years later.

I must add: the strongest, best-sounding song I heard, the only one that really had "oomph," is "Romance in Durango" which is heard as an outro, during the end credits. I must give kudos to that song.

Bob Dylan is my favorite artist of all time. You can't argue over the fact that he is the greatest songwritter of all time. By 1966 with the release of Blonde on Blonde he just could've retired, the man had nothing more to prove. But he continued his path, releasing more and more incredible albums like John Wesley Harding, Blood on the Tracks or the two collabs with The Band. And then 1975 arrived. Dylan wasn't a collaborative man, he never stayed with a unique band, but after seing Patti Smith performing with her group, he decided to finally form his own band. And that's how the Rolling Thunder Revue was originated. Picking some of his friends and whoever else they founded on the road, Dylan embarked on what I would consider his best tour. Musicians of the likes of Joan Baez, Mick Ronson, Joni Mitchell and Roger McGuinn, along with the musicians Dylan worked with on the Desire sessions, formed the Rolling Thunder Revue band. Consisting on the music from his entire career, but mostly focusing of the then unreleased Desire album (one of Dylan best), combined with energy and passion Bob never displayed at such level before, made those concerts legendary. And is about that tour this "documentary" tell us about. Made with modern day interviews and footage of the tour, Scorsese presents us a fantastical recount of the events that were going on back in those days. Why I say fantastical, and why I say "documentary"? Well, you have to know that at the same time of the Rolling Thunder tour, Dylan was making his film Renaldo and Clara, and a lot of the footage here is from that movie. If you know what that movie is about, you should expect to see a lot of fake things here. Some people may be p!ssed because of that, but not me, and neither you if you're a Dylan fan. Seing for the first time stuff out of that movie, it gives me hope that in some day in the future Renaldo and Clara will be re-released. So take in consideration that, some of the backstage stuff and interviews tell fake histories, even some of the characters here are fake, but the confusion this causes is enjoyable, because you will find yourself trying to figure out what's actually true, and that's very funny to me. The only complaints I would have is that in some instanteces the concerts are cut by the interviews, and that in places the editing is kinda floppy. If you're a real Dylan fan, this is a must see, because it gives us new perspectives on one of the strongest eras of this legend.

This is about 30 minutes too long for what it is, but woven within are some really great performances (held longer than needed) and some interesting old footage. It does get a little full of itself in places, but it's worth checking out for Dylan fans.

While I was watching 'Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese' I couldn't help but think: Hey, this live footage is outstanding; it sounds incredible and I'm not even a huge Dylan fan! But darn-it if all this backstory isn't boring as crap.

**two months pass**

When I sat down to write this short, relatively negative review in advance of recording a podcast about how this should have just been released as a concert movie, and the documentary aspects didn't work at all, I stumbled upon the information that nearly all the documentary elements were fiction. The director who shot the original footage? Just an actor playing a character named Stefan Van Dorp, a European filmmaker who claims to have directed the original footage (in reality, Dylan and a crew shot the footage for Dylan's own project, the 1978 feature 'Renaldo and Clara'). Sharon Stone? Digitally inserted into photos; never met Dylan on tour as a 17 or 19 year old or however old she was supposed to be in a past that never happened. There's no word on whether Dylan being inspired by the band KISS to paint his face white is a real factoid or not, and what does it matter? An entire fiction concocted by two elderly men that couldn't even be a fraction as interesting as what actually transpired in reality... now that is truly an artistic statement! +1 for effort, and by effort I mean: genuinely fooling me. Now and then, there's a fool such as I, bored and ready, willing and able to click the next thing I see featured on Netlifx that even remotely intrigues me at all.