The most cosmic documentary of all time, Murray Lerner’s The Other Side of Mirror document of Dylan’s world changing Newport appearances, includes crystal clear,effect free hallucination and the actual alligning of cosmic forces to highlight the transcendence of art and the artist.
Sure there’s little tricks any documentarian can make at the mixing desk/editing stage but basically, lets be clear, you can’t plan or script the shit that’s going down here.
Like the way the wind is blowing up a storm with Bob’s hair bush wild in 1965. And he’s storming heaven now all the barriers down, storming through , heading for electric wipe out. And christ the electric stuff when it comes…Mike Bloomfield’s pulsing chicken scratching Chicago style given preternaturally bopping larger than life Dylan mirror image guitarist kick. That shots of Mick bopping round the stage smiling and rehearsing and laying down the Gods of life and fire on Stone?
Purest explication of Bob’s stated in No Direction Home belief that the late great Paul Butterfield band axeman star was his greatest ever guitarist.
Just after the announcer states the imminent curtailing of the da Bob - whose complete control throughout the footage, from his incredible, shape changing Manchild folk workshop early Enigma of Kasper Hauser alike appearances, to the rapier Rock God in Polka Dot shaded splendour - just comes to the mic, never misses a beat and says “that’s what you think”.
So many moments stay in the mind as Anthony Wall says later these songs have the freshness of newness for both Bob and the audience, like magical flowers in their early crazed glory.
Item - before being re seeded and threaded and ploughed through the Gospel tours, the Larry Campbell Band, the Freddy Koella Band, the end of time and space itself band It Aint’s Me Babe in its first flush - Bob grinning like a man boy going out on his own stealing the words of the song, the message hid plain sight as Joan Baez smile says it all - and she lets him go, leaves him to himself, to the world, to history.
With Dylan’s oeuvre it is easy to become blaze, essential to maintain vigilance. You might, for instance, think that post Eat The Document, post No Direction Home you have seen it all. But Murray’s marvel - the beautifully preserved black and white footage with a luminosity. a painting with white light on Bible black background (apres screening the redoubtable Clancy said how much, hidden in plain sight again, the influence of Dylan THOMAS and his ability to blend opposites into a third, through the mirror, meaning came through in the doc). That lighting that black and white contrast is Wholly Holy - it recalls the monochrome magick of Cinematographer supreme Roger Alton (whose work on Ford’s version of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath will surely have been a major touchstone for Dylan, Lerner and the folk movement as a whole) and it is a major factor in making this what could be the greatest Dylan on film product ever.
Oh yeah that and the songs!
Lerner’s document is unparalleled - as fastidious and true to its subject, as Scientific and exacting as its subject was and still is about the music that daily enriches and transforms him.
I had to laugh when a critic director supping wine at the aftershow averred that “as a documentary, I wasn’t sure that it worked, its slightly bitty”.
I controlled myself didnt raise wine glass or voice. But fundamentally I couldnt disagree more.
That is to say - what is the bane of the music documentary ? The Talking bleeding head, that’s who. Telling you why the music is important, breaking into some life changing footage to tell you why or how you should be listening. Lerner on Dylan is different because it allows complete and unvarnished extraordinary performances to accumulate, to play fully, beautifully filmed, incredibly detailed (My pal Roger said that it works on 2 levels - a documentary about MIC PLACEMENT that also happens to be a great Bob Dylan documentary).
The metal globe shaped mic is the same one each year. But positioning of the world/mic globe (singing into the world geddit)perceptibly changes through the years as the Newport technicians learn, there’s no need for the two pronged “stereo micing “approach. Particularly the old style folkie way of miking to the performers chest just weren’t right for Dylan whose insistence on his own way of moving meant the greatest transforming song of the century and the odd clatter against the mic.
And these performances are intense, man. Who Killed Davey Mooore? Jesus! The young Bob as some sorta super savant, the analyst of song, apprising and weighing out the scales of justice. I mean you can understand why EVERYONE had to study him, stick close to learn how to write, who could take that many angles, see things that many ways, in a song ?
And the little rushes of wind that sound like distant thunder breaking at the moment of “Take me for a trip…” on the first Tambourine Man? A song that in some ways is the recurring marker in the film’s ongoing unofficial, fun to play but possibly fruitless competition to find the most rebellious, the most revolutionary Dylan song.
That song and the performances of it here broker new areas of the imagination, a break into the world of pellucid colour(though black and white blissfully maintained), personal willfulness and deep spiritual quest.
It occured then that much as we love him for all the brain blitzed, rib tickling insights, the deathless cries against injustice, Dylan’s most dangerous Manifesto may simply be the invocation of the Tambourine Dream man, the insistence on, though dazed and filled up with the wonder of sated sartori, FOLLOWING THE MUSIC AS A WAY OF LIFE.
Would the world be a better place if everyone did that?
Crazier, more magical?
Who can tell? We could, at some stage down the line of this old time - or the next one GIVE IT A GO!
Fact is that as Heartist Dylan sounded a call, laid down a tender challenge in his understanding and transmission of the content and form. And its still as rich and deep and real now as it ever was.
Context is everything and you could see it in the eyes of those around him on the Newport Folk workshop stage - the humility, the awareness that the Best Has Come Among Us. Dylan’s physical change, alligned to that anchoring sense of self and artistic control is another hugely significant factor enshrined in Murray’s Mirror.
I mean those early performances he looks like a 50s youth who is actually a spy from the future grinning, like HE KNOWS THE FUTURE already, hears and sees it mapped out in the music (All songs by Bob Dylan, what an astonishing end plate. One man did all this?)
Yes..and no Dylan you think at the end of this isnt just Dylan he is a reflection of us all our higher better side our eternal striving for the best, the most passionate, the cleevrest, the sweetest most unforgettable song the heart can sing!
And context, context is everything. Seeing this at a one off NFT screening with the mighty Liam Clancy (William to the lovely you can’t hurray a Murray who introduced him at the end of the q and a) was a blast.
I mean what more do you want to confirm the all conquering transcendence of the piece than the presence in the same row of Clancy and , largely unnoticed Nic Roeg. Bob’s decisive and implacable and resolute Irish influence Clancy and the one surviving half of Performance, the last word in art life transmorgification?
The BBC get it wrong so may times, but Anthony Wall’s ongoing Dylan campaign is an island of excellence.
Newport on TV on Friday night.
Prepare to be amazed by Bob..all over again.
