There's more than one new Dylan movie out there this fall. Besides the seven ways of looking at Bob in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, there's Murray Lerner's The Other Side of the Mirror: Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-1965. The black and white doc, which came out on DVD in October, is a no-talking-heads compendium of performance footage from the three Newport Folk Festival appearances that are so crucial to the Dylan myth.
(Between Christian Bale, who plays an ardent folk singer named Jack Hardy, and Heath Ledger, who plays an actor named Robbie who plays Hardy in a biopic within the biopic, and Cate Blanchett, who plays bushy haired androgy-dylan in the movie's Fellini-esque section, Haynes has all three of the Newport Dylans covered. Read an interview with Haynes here. Steven Rea's review is here.)
The Dylans in Lerner's Mirror are pretty hard to compete with, though, whether it's the babyfaced boy singing "North Country Blues" in his work shirt in 1963, or the bohemian Bard whose poofy hair is blowin' in the wind as he does "If You Gotta Go (Go Now)," in 1965, or the flannel shirted guy who asks "if anyone has an e harmonica" than nearly gets pelted with them on stage.
Most of the performance footage is pretty fabulous, and Lerner's no-narration technique makes the few non-musical moments that much more telling, as when a giggly Dylan finds himself trapped in a fishbowl-like car wondering "Where are all my friends? They deserted me." Or when a group a fans come to the conclusion that once a performer gets to the point where he's idolized like a "God-man" like Dylan is, well then "who needs him anymore?"
Watching the electric performances of "Maggie's Farm' and "Like A Rolling Stone" from '65 that have been so written about and over analyzed feels almost illicit, like you're watching something that you're not supposed to see, an episode from oral and written history that's somehow become miraculously available as a primary source. And yes, you can hear the legendary boos, which seem particularly absurd, considering how great both Dylan and Mike Bloomfield sound.
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