It took forever for Martin Scorsese‘s No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (’05) to be released on Bluray, but now’s a good time for those who never saw it or never really absorbed the legend, especially given Dylan’s just-announced Nobel prize for literature. (The Bluray doesn’t actually street until 10.28.)
I remember watching this 208-minute doc with 18-year-old Jett in the summer of ’06, and his saying around the 70- or 80-minute mark, or roughly where Dylan’s career was in ’60 or ’61, “I don’t get it” — i.e., what was the big deal about this guy? That’s because Dylan didn’t really come into full flower until ’62 or even ’63, and because Part One of No Direction Home (roughly the 110-minute mark) ends with Dylan’s performance at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. That’s when the heavy journey really began, and when the earth began to move.
People forget that Dylan wasn’t fully free of his lefty-social-protest folk troubadour chapter until Another Side of Bob Dylan. And for many, he didn’t really hit the brass-ring zeitgeist jackpot until Bringin’ It All Back Home.