ROLLING THUNDER REVUE (2019) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Martin Scorsese
In 1975, Bob Dylan set out on tour - driving the bus, it looks like - along with Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and a bunch of musicians known collectively as the Rolling Thunder Revue. Some 40 years later, Martin Scorsese took footage from the tour and concocted this alleged documentary, with Dylan in whiteface and eye makeup performing some of his best songs, while he and others provide retrospective commentary as talking-head witnesses. "I don't remember a thing about Rolling Thunder . . . so what do you want to know?" Dylan says at one point, and that's as close as he comes to explaining himself. The movie makes no distinction between what's real and what's invented, and you don't always know, till finally Michael Murphy turns up in his persona as Senator Jack Tanner, talking about how Jimmy Carter once got him into a Dylan show in Niagara Falls. In a movie like this one, fronted by Bob Dylan, the fact that Jack Tanner is fictitious makes perfect sense.
