Well-executed buffet

Friday, December 7, 2007

The Other Side of Bob Dylan's Mirror

I remember reading comments in the past about Murray Lerner's documentary Festival! I saw it a couple years back and enjoyed the energy he captured at the grand daddy of modern festival. I am even more pleased with his recent The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival.

I guess the model for this release are a couple films by another great documentary chronicler of Dylan, DA Pennebakerwith his single artist performances from Monterey Pop: Shake! Otis at Monterey and Jimi Plays Monterey. In Lerner's new DVD and these films of Pennebaker's, the filmmakers perform the video music equivalent of a key rule in algebra here; they isolate the variable.

It would be easy to classify this collection as the DVD equivalent of a record album and it is rather. But Lerner's straight forward presentation style with smart choices in editing creates a film that needs to be recognized on its own terms, not just as a collection of performance clips. This really becomes clear when one watches the DVD's extra, a recent interview of Lerner.

In the extra, Murray Lerner begins with a perceptive remarks about the relationship of film and modern poetry, and Sergei Eisenstein. As mentioned, there are folks out there who have unfortunately dismissed Lerner. Hopefully, this release and especially the interview will give lots of folks like myself the chance to discover a very creative individual who gives lots of great insights and memories of the time, and more notably,he takes this time as opportunity to share his philosophy and theories of film and music. What we know now as the sixties zeitgeist was recognized early by Lerner and his fascination on what what Dylan and others were doing at the time is central to his filmmaking craft in this film as well as Festival. I now look forward to Electric Miles and another screeing of his Isle of Wight film.

Space and time limit the comments of all of the performances and fine documentary film craft that are in Other Side of the Mirror, but here are few I have to note:

"North Country Blues," which feels like a biographical backdrop painting during a workshop session with Docs Boggs and Watson sitting in the background onstage, as well as that most ubiquitous of folk men, Pete Seeger.

"Only a Pawn in Their Game," his song about Medgar Evers ends the evening set. This is the performance truly showcases pure protest voice of pre-Tambourine man Bobby Z.

You just got to love the lunky hanging mikes above the heads of the finale with Baez, Seeger, Peter Paul & Mary, and the Freedom singers as they back up Bobby on Blowin' In the Wind."

The 1964 workshop session with an early performance of Mr. Tambourine which begins with a crowd shout request for Cocaine to which Dylan says "Yes, yes I hear you well. I think you got the wrong man."

Chimes of Freedom from 64. Eh gads! Is there power in this performance or what? The crowd goes wild and one of the Peter Paul and Mary guys as emcee is overwhelmed by the melee until Bobby comes out amped out and happy to take another bow.

"Love Minus Zero/No Limit" has been my favorite Dylan song ever since I viewed Pennebaker's Don't Look Back a couple of years ago. The 1965 Newport version features a tight closeup on dylan with boughs of trees blowing behind him. (Oh how I love the 1960s Kodak BW PlusX and TriX film emulsions!)

Dylan goes electric is, of course, the big story of 1965 Newport mainstage peformance. The soundcheck, Maggie's Farm, and Like a Rolling Stone are marvelously documented here. The Newport 65 performance of Like a Rolling Stone is not so in your face as the single or later live versions with the Band. It is almost a shuffle version and the organ parts are more gospelly. Two organists are listed in the credits. Al Kooper, of course, but what gives with Barry Goldberg's listing? I'm straining to hear if there are two organs on the track. I'm sure Greil Marcus has this covered in his book on Like a Rollng Stone, but I don't have it nearby to check.

And, of course, there is the famous acoustic encore (how much booing was there really?) where Dylan asks for an E harmonica and what sounds like scores of them immediately hit the stage.

There have been a lot of strange and dubious releases in recent years in the wake of Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home. Including

, but Mirror is the real deal, an authorized Columbia CBS video release with what really matters, primary source performances interpreted quite well by solid filmmaking.

posted by well-executed buffet at 11:58 PM

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