The thunder rolls

Martin Scorsese stokes the legend of Bob Dylan in new documentary Martin Scorsese’s The Rolling

Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story is a fascinating, wildly engrossing document of the musical icon in a state of rebirth. In 1975, Dylan hadn’t embarked on tour in almost a decade, having retreated to hs Woodstock studio after suffering a major motorcycle accident nearly a decade earlier. By the time Steven Van Dorp, the “filmmaker” behind much of the tour footage captured in The Rolling Thunder Revue, sets his cameras on Dylan and the ensuing east coast tour, Dylan has reemerged, reincarnating himself in the image of a trickster scarecrow—ready to put on a show like nothing he’s done before. 

The Rolling Thunder Revue finds Dylan a decade after bursting onto the scene as the folk poet laureate of American music, seemingly bored with the persona he’s tailored over the previous decade. By 1975, the United States was facing a bit of an identity crisis itself. Gone was the counterculture idealism of the ‘60s, replaced by a nation in flux: Watergate civil unrest, and The Vietnam War rage on as the United States reached its second centennial, more perplexed than ever about its future. It’s the perfect backdrop for Martin Scorsese to reassemble this beguiling pastiche of a film.

The Netflix documentary is comprised largely of performance footage and interviews from the 1975 tour Dylan embarked upon soon after the release of his landmark album, Blood on the Tracks. Much to the chagrin of the tour promoters, its venues consisted not of the sold-out arena kind one would expect from a protean star like Dylan—instead, the artist and a revolving door of musicians, poets, and hangers-on set out via an RV and a tour bus traveling around New England, playing intimate venues, small theaters, and even the Tuscarosa Indian Reservation.

It’s a hot, hippy mess featuring a who’s who of the ‘70s folk and rock scene: Joan Baez, Ronnie Hawkins, Joni Mitchell, with poet Alan Ginsberg frequently acting as our spiritual guide. At the center of the hurricane always is Dylan, face painted clown white, playfully taunting the camera crew like a puckish court jester.

The Rolling Thunder Revue is catnip for any die hard Dylan fan or anyone who’s a sucker for rock ‘n roll tour docs from the ‘60s and ‘70s—like The Song Remains the Same, Monterey Pop or the seminal Woodstock, on which Scorsese briefly served as an editor. But The Rolling Thunder Revue is more than just a document from the heyday of the rock ‘n roll era.

Working from thousands of hours of 16mm film as well as new interviews with many of the participants of the tour—including Dylan himself—Scorsese doesn’t simply deliver a highlight reel from the tour; instead, the legendary director approaches the material in a more playful, practically satirical tone. Interviews with actors Sharon Stone and Michael Murphy mischievously call into question the veracity of truth in this film. The filmmaker Steven Van Drop isn’t even his real name. (It’s Martin Van Haselberg.)

Dylan and Scorsese are devilishly toying with our expectations of what a documentary like this should be. Dylan, ever obsessed with masks and persona, and Scorsese obsessed with the magic and manipulation of our visual language, serve up an experience that is both a satisfying rock ‘n roll documentary and fascinating glimpse into the troubadour’s return to the stage.