How Does It Feel?

How on earth can it be put in words? Seems impossible.

Yes, I’m ejecting myself from a plush seat in the Bogart section of the Orana Cinema in Albany and attempting to describe a movie that took me back six decades to another era. Teenage years. Unattainable girls. Too young to drink (legally). Hardly a whiff of Haight-Ashbury in the air. Kennedy dead. Peace and love seeping through shock and despair. And young Robert Zimmerman knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s door. Curly hair. Cap. Jacket. Obligatory motorcycle. What a ride!

Music was a balm; a salve for acne and angst. Like most of my mates, I was a rock ‘n’ roll aficionado rather than a folk follower. We sat transfixed in the Capitol Theatre in Perth as the Rolling Stones broke through the barricades. But I had a soft spot for Pete Seeger, not to mention Joan and Judy and Joni. So I did tend to look at life from both sides now, even as Jagger walked his dog. But Dylan – Dylan was something else.

That ‘something else’ is captured poignantly and dramatically in A Complete Unknown. The reviewer in the Oz gave it 5 stars. I wouldn’t shoot that high but it’s near enough. Timothée Chalamet, who plays His Bob-ness, mumbles his way through conversations but once he’s behind the microphone, it’s Dylan who greets your ears. And, as the times are a’changing, so does the music. We see the stunned reactions from the genteel folk crowd at Newport as Dylan and his ensemble electrify. Yet in a short time they – and those of us riffing along in faraway places – are more like rolling stones than the calcified world around us. He has arrived, Mr Zimmerman. No longer a complete unknown.

The supporting cast is magnificent. I was particularly taken by Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. She is both attracted and repelled by the young minstrel who emerges from obscurity in Minnesota. They are collaborators and competitors, genders divided, but – behind the microphones – supercharged in song. Within kissing distance, they eyeball one another while pumping out ‘it ain’t me babe’. Plugged in. Present.

Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) and Pete Seeger (Ed Norton) are a study in contrasts. Pete, until Dylan upsets his applecart, is old world charm personified, willing to make space for young whippersnappers (as long as they remain on the folky path). Cash – who I had the good fortune to see live in Germany in the early 70s – is appropriately dark and macho magnetic. His musical cameos in the film could have upstaged Dylan but instead are subtly deferential.

If you are coming for the music rather than the story, you won’t be disappointed. We are treated to many old favourites as well as some of the earlier stuff that’s not so familiar. But beyond that, the movie is masterful in that it takes you back to a time that was both tender and terrible. Dylan starts off without a great deal of political consciousness but, upon lobbing in New York, this changes. By the time he releases his album, The Freewheeling Bob Dylan in May 1963 we get songs like Masters of War. The searing lyrics capture the growing zeitgeist around the Vietnam conflict. In Australia, conscription was 18 months away but the anti-war messages had begun to permeate. Baez was already flying her activist flag and Dylan took the musical message to a new level.

I remember being surprised when Bob was awarded the Nobel prize. My vote would have gone to Leonard. But Cohen, predictably, was gracious in his response and I can see now that the good judges in Stockholm didn’t need to think twice – it’s all right.

Credit Natasya Chen Unsplash

* Bruce Menzies. Based in Fremantle, most of the time, Bruce Menzies is the author of three novels, a family history, and a recent memoir. Details at ‪BruceJamesMenzies.com If you’d like to read more of Bruce Menzies’ work on Fremantle Shipping News or listen to a fascinating podcast interview with Bruce, look here

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