The Girl from the North Country (Off-Broadway)

It's a NYT Critic's Pick and fresh off an acclaimed run in London, I was looking forward to this show. Rachel, always the lucky one, won two (out of four per performance) rush tickets to see the show. However, I must admit I was disappointed. I didn't really get it. The music is done in a totally different style than anything Bob Dylan has ever sang. And the arrangements are really well done (I love the double bass and fiddle, but why don't they use the piano at the front of the stage more, and is the drum really necessary?), but I'm unsure how any of the music tied into the play. Was I not paying close enough attention to the lyrics?

The story doesn't have a clear protagonist. Everyone plays support, which begs the question, who is the girl from the north country? There are several girls in the play. I felt like some of the scenes didn't play out. For example, there is a bit of blackmail that doesn't come back (unless I missed it when I dozed off a little?).  I don't really feel like we get a satisfying ending to anyone's story line. Or maybe that's the point. Depression era theater isn't exactly uplifting.

I wonder Bob Dylan would say about this. In his Nobel lecture, he talks about how Shakespeare didn't consider his works literature. He was writing plays, thinking about casting and staging. In a similar vein, Dylan doesn't consider his work literature. He writes songs, and readily acknowledges that, but maybe in the future we will study Dylan as literature. Here, his lyrics are considered in yet another context. And new context demonstrates its versatility, really highlighting his skills not as a musician, but dare I say, as a writer.

I'm Not There (2007)

I'm Not There is a very innovative biopic that very loosely based on "the many lives" of Bob Dylan.  Dylan is played by six different actors, including a black child actor, and a woman.  Each character goes by a different name (none of them Bob or Dylan) and they represent different stages of Dylan's life, or rather different parts of his persona.  Cate Blanchett was especially convincing playing a 60s-era Dylan.  I wish I knew a little more about Bob Dylan because I feel like I missed out on a lot of the details that were included in the film that allude to his life.

The film is very stylish with two of the six actors being portrayed in black and white, and one of the six being portrayed in a documentary format.  Time is not linear in the slightest, jumping constantly between personas.  The whole thing is very surreal and sometimes you're not quite sure what to make of what you're seeing on screen.  But it is fitting for such an enigmatic man as Bob Dylan.

The film opens with a motorcycle accident (a reference to Dylan's own motorcycle accident) and Jude Quinn's subsequent autopsy.  I could not help but draw a parallel to the opening of Lawrence of Arabia, another biopic about a complex man who wore different personas in different phases of his life.