BOB DYLAN
Weird, right?I'm interested in the way space is used in film because I think that spatial structures in music are often used similarly—albeit on a smaller scale. Though film generates a more immediate sensory response than music by leaving less to the imagination (we see the hero triumph), music is visceral in its own way and I think that the space between, around, and within sounds can tell similar stories. I anticipate the visualization of the audio experience will be one of the more important components of all future artistic—and commercial—expression.
With that thesis in mind, it's kind of funny that one of the two movies I saw recently had no soundtrack. There was sound—boots crunching across the desert, screws pulling out of the wall, the hiss of a captive bolt stunner—but no songs or music. As it pertains to my statement about space in music, the lack of actual song in this film makes my connection more metaphoric. This music-less film was No Country For Old Men. While I wouldn't have made this statement walking out of the theater, I'll say now that I think this is one of the better movies I've seen recently. I mean this in two ways: first, I cannot get it out of my head; second, it was technically flawless. Each scene was just right, a real nice slice of pie with homemade whipped cream.
The No Country trailer.
The other movie I saw was all soundtrack, sort of. It was the anti-biopic biopic about Bob Dylan, I'm Not There. As an image collage, it was occasionally marvelous, but there wasn't much coherence. I assume the writer/director (Todd Haynes) knows more about Mr. Dylan than most people, but that's doesn't go very far as a compelling critical reaction. Had Mr. Haynes' filmed Mr. Dylan's career in music videos and asked nothing more of the audience than to watch strange music come to life, he would have been onto something. As it stands, the non-musical moments were plot-less and trying.
One the better moments of I'm Not There, featuring David Cross as Allen Ginsburg.
Like the Coen brothers (who created No Country), Mr. Haynes shattered the conventions of narrative structure, something I'm always excited to hear in a song. In pop music narration is subversive; in film you look right at it. In No Country (spoiler alert, sort of), the actor Josh Brolin is hunted by the actor Javier Bardem, who incarnates evil. We see Mr. Brolin chased, shot, repaired, shot more, then chased more. This is the better part of the film. Then, in a startling cut, we see Mr. Brolin (I think) face down in a swimming pool. The film goes on for nearly half an hour, now bereft of its semi-hero. We don't see a reenactment of his murder or even his corpse. It's as though he was killed from fiction. In the end, we're reminded the film is sort of about Tommy Lee Jones, whose sheriff-on-the-case character is about five moves behind the action at all times. Hence the title, sort of.
The narration leaks into the structure of No Country—much to the Coen's credit. Honestly, I think many at my screening were just angry. I'll admit, it's a bit of a rough way to go about adventurous filmmaking, by leading in with a gorgeous, violent, inventive, good vs. evil modern western that suddenly becomes a movie about subverting the medium. I can see how, for some, it must have seemed like Mr. Dylan going electric.
Mr. Dylan "going electric" supplies an awesome archetype for my thoughts on space. The Coen's can take away the one character you're sure of, and Mr. Dylan can go from folk hero to something unprecedented and distorting overnight, but these things don't stop the narrative. These things might test our patience with the art, but the narrative continues, man. These moments of artistic adventure allow us to reconsider the possibilities of space.
Whether filmic or musical, we see, the narration appears in levels beyond dialogue and beyond lyrics. There's the story in the lyrics (if there are lyrics), but then there's the music and the build of the song. The lyrical narrative expands below, or at least within, the words. Mr. Dylan exemplifies many of these elements: there's his persona, there's the imperfect quality of his voice, there's his stylistic idiosyncrasies, there's his prismatic vision of the real world. When, in the song "Ballad Of A Thin Man," Mr. Dylan sings, "Well, you walk into the room/ like a camel and then you frown/ You put your eyes in your pocket/ and your nose on the ground", it's not just a strange thing to say, it's a strange thing to say over a grinding blues progression gussied up as a pop song by a singer whose conversation with the world is as transfixing as it is one-sided.
Which makes it totally admirable for Mr. Haynes to attempt this type of literal rendering of the mysterious narrative that has an artist like Mr. Dylan existing in the world. The portion of the film in which Mr. Haynes portrays "Ballad Of A Thin Man" is the best six minutes of the movie, real powerful stuff. Cate Blanchett (five actors perform as different "Dylans") is acting out Mr. Dylan as over-protective, just-went-electric, nihilist art-star. He, or she, is accused by a BBC critic for betraying the folk-y sincerity that he/she used to build an international audience. The lengthy back-and-forth (which takes Ms. Dylan and the critic through a few of the actual sets used in Federico Fellini's film about failure, 8 ½) "Ballad" is performed live and electric to a booing British crowd. The performance is successful in a literal way (Mr. Dylan is offered additional tour dates, for some reason) and in a metaphoric way, as the smirking critic ends up trapped in Dada logistics of the song. At one point, alone in a restroom, the critic keeps looking over his shoulder and watching himself come into the restroom, confused as to how clones keep filling up the stalls. Of course nothing comes of this, but it's powerfully weird, a testament to the song and, for six minutes, the filmmaker. (Though not the film. Trust me.)
The worst thing about I'm Not There is that it comes off as a movie about an anachronism in an anachronism in an anachronism, until nothing seems right or wrong or in or out of place. I never could have imagined feeling this way, especially after being subjected to Ray and Walk The Line, films that must have been based off the dust jackets of unauthorized biographies. Like Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, Mr. Dylan ran through familiar spaces in ways no one expected. (I'm talking about songs.) Just because art effaces expectations or seems too dense or sounds too loud or suddenly changes course doesn't mean the artist is too weird for the world—or vice versa. It just means there's more to learn.
"Ballad Of A Thin Man" live.
Trailer for I'm Not There.
“Simple Twist Of Fate” (from Blood On The Tracks)
“Ballad Of A Thin Man” (written by Bob Dylan and performed by Steven Malkmus on the OST for I'm Not Here)
With that thesis in mind, it's kind of funny that one of the two movies I saw recently had no soundtrack. There was sound—boots crunching across the desert, screws pulling out of the wall, the hiss of a captive bolt stunner—but no songs or music. As it pertains to my statement about space in music, the lack of actual song in this film makes my connection more metaphoric. This music-less film was No Country For Old Men. While I wouldn't have made this statement walking out of the theater, I'll say now that I think this is one of the better movies I've seen recently. I mean this in two ways: first, I cannot get it out of my head; second, it was technically flawless. Each scene was just right, a real nice slice of pie with homemade whipped cream.
The No Country trailer.
The other movie I saw was all soundtrack, sort of. It was the anti-biopic biopic about Bob Dylan, I'm Not There. As an image collage, it was occasionally marvelous, but there wasn't much coherence. I assume the writer/director (Todd Haynes) knows more about Mr. Dylan than most people, but that's doesn't go very far as a compelling critical reaction. Had Mr. Haynes' filmed Mr. Dylan's career in music videos and asked nothing more of the audience than to watch strange music come to life, he would have been onto something. As it stands, the non-musical moments were plot-less and trying.
One the better moments of I'm Not There, featuring David Cross as Allen Ginsburg.
Like the Coen brothers (who created No Country), Mr. Haynes shattered the conventions of narrative structure, something I'm always excited to hear in a song. In pop music narration is subversive; in film you look right at it. In No Country (spoiler alert, sort of), the actor Josh Brolin is hunted by the actor Javier Bardem, who incarnates evil. We see Mr. Brolin chased, shot, repaired, shot more, then chased more. This is the better part of the film. Then, in a startling cut, we see Mr. Brolin (I think) face down in a swimming pool. The film goes on for nearly half an hour, now bereft of its semi-hero. We don't see a reenactment of his murder or even his corpse. It's as though he was killed from fiction. In the end, we're reminded the film is sort of about Tommy Lee Jones, whose sheriff-on-the-case character is about five moves behind the action at all times. Hence the title, sort of.
The narration leaks into the structure of No Country—much to the Coen's credit. Honestly, I think many at my screening were just angry. I'll admit, it's a bit of a rough way to go about adventurous filmmaking, by leading in with a gorgeous, violent, inventive, good vs. evil modern western that suddenly becomes a movie about subverting the medium. I can see how, for some, it must have seemed like Mr. Dylan going electric.
Mr. Dylan "going electric" supplies an awesome archetype for my thoughts on space. The Coen's can take away the one character you're sure of, and Mr. Dylan can go from folk hero to something unprecedented and distorting overnight, but these things don't stop the narrative. These things might test our patience with the art, but the narrative continues, man. These moments of artistic adventure allow us to reconsider the possibilities of space.
Whether filmic or musical, we see, the narration appears in levels beyond dialogue and beyond lyrics. There's the story in the lyrics (if there are lyrics), but then there's the music and the build of the song. The lyrical narrative expands below, or at least within, the words. Mr. Dylan exemplifies many of these elements: there's his persona, there's the imperfect quality of his voice, there's his stylistic idiosyncrasies, there's his prismatic vision of the real world. When, in the song "Ballad Of A Thin Man," Mr. Dylan sings, "Well, you walk into the room/ like a camel and then you frown/ You put your eyes in your pocket/ and your nose on the ground", it's not just a strange thing to say, it's a strange thing to say over a grinding blues progression gussied up as a pop song by a singer whose conversation with the world is as transfixing as it is one-sided.
Which makes it totally admirable for Mr. Haynes to attempt this type of literal rendering of the mysterious narrative that has an artist like Mr. Dylan existing in the world. The portion of the film in which Mr. Haynes portrays "Ballad Of A Thin Man" is the best six minutes of the movie, real powerful stuff. Cate Blanchett (five actors perform as different "Dylans") is acting out Mr. Dylan as over-protective, just-went-electric, nihilist art-star. He, or she, is accused by a BBC critic for betraying the folk-y sincerity that he/she used to build an international audience. The lengthy back-and-forth (which takes Ms. Dylan and the critic through a few of the actual sets used in Federico Fellini's film about failure, 8 ½) "Ballad" is performed live and electric to a booing British crowd. The performance is successful in a literal way (Mr. Dylan is offered additional tour dates, for some reason) and in a metaphoric way, as the smirking critic ends up trapped in Dada logistics of the song. At one point, alone in a restroom, the critic keeps looking over his shoulder and watching himself come into the restroom, confused as to how clones keep filling up the stalls. Of course nothing comes of this, but it's powerfully weird, a testament to the song and, for six minutes, the filmmaker. (Though not the film. Trust me.)
The worst thing about I'm Not There is that it comes off as a movie about an anachronism in an anachronism in an anachronism, until nothing seems right or wrong or in or out of place. I never could have imagined feeling this way, especially after being subjected to Ray and Walk The Line, films that must have been based off the dust jackets of unauthorized biographies. Like Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, Mr. Dylan ran through familiar spaces in ways no one expected. (I'm talking about songs.) Just because art effaces expectations or seems too dense or sounds too loud or suddenly changes course doesn't mean the artist is too weird for the world—or vice versa. It just means there's more to learn.
"Ballad Of A Thin Man" live.
Trailer for I'm Not There.
“Simple Twist Of Fate” (from Blood On The Tracks)
“Ballad Of A Thin Man” (written by Bob Dylan and performed by Steven Malkmus on the OST for I'm Not Here)
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