OK, where to start? Depending on your disposition or frame of mind, this will either strike you as something brilliant or a complete waste of time. Maybe it could be both, I'm not sure. For one thing, it would help greatly if you've lived the last half century to get some takeaway from the picture. Dylan made his bones in the turbulent Sixties with songs that questioned dubious politics, war and even life itself. But what was the substance of his message? Most of the time he couldn't tell you because he was making music, music that reached out and conveyed an ethereal quality that was blowin' in the wind somewhere. Fans would get hung up on the meaning of an album cover when it was just an album cover. Sometimes it didn't get any deeper than that, but there was this hunger for some meaningful introspection that just wasn't there.
"Masked and Anonymous" is like that. With a backdrop of various Dylan tunes ("All of the songs are recognizable, even if they're not recognizable" - Uncle Sweetheart), the story meanders along hinting at a flash-point when the revolutionaries will turn everything upside down. But the fact is, everything's upside down anyway. Dylan himself looks like a Central American dictator, often back-dropped by characters looking like John Paul II, Ghandi and Abe Lincoln. The supporting cast is formidable, but they all seem to be in different movies. Of the bunch, Val Kilmer is brilliant as a visionary animal wrangler who deftly handles a poisonous coral snake and pretends to kill a rabbit. That it was a White Rabbit might have been another subtle attempt to bridge the past with the present, but then again, it might not.
The one thing I can unquestionably say I enjoyed about the picture was Dylan's rendition of 'Dixie' - very cool. I groaned slightly when the young girl did 'The Times They are a Changin' because it was so expected. I think though, if Dylan really wants to tell us something, he should just come out and say it.
"Masked and Anonymous" is like that. With a backdrop of various Dylan tunes ("All of the songs are recognizable, even if they're not recognizable" - Uncle Sweetheart), the story meanders along hinting at a flash-point when the revolutionaries will turn everything upside down. But the fact is, everything's upside down anyway. Dylan himself looks like a Central American dictator, often back-dropped by characters looking like John Paul II, Ghandi and Abe Lincoln. The supporting cast is formidable, but they all seem to be in different movies. Of the bunch, Val Kilmer is brilliant as a visionary animal wrangler who deftly handles a poisonous coral snake and pretends to kill a rabbit. That it was a White Rabbit might have been another subtle attempt to bridge the past with the present, but then again, it might not.
The one thing I can unquestionably say I enjoyed about the picture was Dylan's rendition of 'Dixie' - very cool. I groaned slightly when the young girl did 'The Times They are a Changin' because it was so expected. I think though, if Dylan really wants to tell us something, he should just come out and say it.