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Bob Dylan - No Direction Home (2DVD) | 
| Director: Martin Scorsese
Actors: Bob Dylan, Paul Nelson
Studio: Paramount
Category: DVD
List Price: CDN$ 15.99
Buy New: CDN$ 9.81
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New (13) Used (1) from CDN$ 9.81
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 686
Format: Full Screen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 031054
UPC: 097360310542
EAN: 0097360310542
ASIN: B000A0GP4K
Theatrical Release Date: July 21, 2005
Release Date: September 20, 2005
Availability: Usually ships within 1 - 2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
It's virtually impossible to approach No Direction Home without a cluster of fixed ideas. Who doesn't have their own private Dylan? The true excellence of Martin Scorsese's achievement lies in how his documentary shakes us free of our comfortable assumptions. In the process, it plays out on several levels at once, each taking shape as an unfailingly fascinating narrative. There is, of course, the central story of an individual genius staking out his artistic identity. But along with this Bildungsroman come other threads and contexts: most notably, the role of popular culture in postwar America, art's self-reliance versus its social responsibilities, and fans' complicity with the publicity machine in sustaining myths. All of these threads reinforce each other, together weaving the film's intricate texture. Scorsese's 200-plus-minute focus on Dylan's earliest years allows for a portrayal of unprecedented depth, with multiple angles: a rich composite photo is the result. The main narrative has an epic quality: it moves from Dylan growing up in cold-war Minnesota through Greenwich Village coffeehouses and the Newport Folk Festival, climaxing in the controversial 1966 U.K. tour that crowned a period of unbridled and explosive creativity. In his transition from Robert Allen Zimmerman to Bob Dylan, we observe him concocting his impossible-to-describe, unique combination of the topical with the archaic, like an ancient oracle. Scorsese was able to access previously unseen footage from the Dylan archives, including performances, press conferences, and recording sessions. He also uses interviews with Dylan's friends, ex-friends, and fellow artists, and, intriguingly, with the notoriously reclusive Dylan himself (who looks back to provide glosses on the early years), fusing what could have turned into a tiresome series of digressions and tangents into a powerful whole as enlightening, eccentric, contradictory, and ultimately irreducible as its subject. Some of the deeply personal bits remain unrevealed, but Dylan's preternatural self-assurance acquires a slightly self-deprecating, even comic edge via some of his reflective comments. Alongside the arrogance, we see touching moments of the young artist's reverence for Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash. Joan Baez, in a poignant confessional mood, comes off well, and the late Allen Ginsberg is so seraphically charming he almost steals the show a few times. A crucial throughline is Dylan's hunger for recognition and ability to shape perceptions so that would be singled out as not just another dime-a-dozen folk singer. It's illuminating--particularly for those familiar with the artist's latter-day aloofness on stage--to see his reactions to audience booing in the wake of his "betrayal" in this fuller context. No Direction Home also makes clear--in a way that wasn't possible in D.A. Pennebaker's iconic Don't Look Back--how Dylan's ability to manipulate his persona always, at its core, protects the urge for expression: Dylan's ultimate mandate, as an artist, is never to be pinned down. As Scorsese masterfully shows, the myth around Dylan only grows bigger the more we discover about him. --Thomas May DVD features: This two-disc set of Scorsese's full two-part documentary includes treats such as Dylan working on a song at his hotel during the UK tour as well as performing several songs as in concert or on TV. More for the Dylanologist 
No Direction Home: The Soundtrack | 
Chronicles: Volume One (paperback edition) | 
Bob Dylan Scrapbook | 
Don't Look Back | 
See Bob Dylan's complete catalogue at Amazon.ca | 
The Last Waltz |
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| Customer Reviews:
 Documenting Bob Dylan's glory years, 1941-1966 July 20, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I was out on the deck cooking a steak and listening to Bob Dylan playing down in Bayfront Park when between songs he pointed out to the crowd that he had been born here in the Zenith City in a hospital on the side of the hill. This was the second time that Dylan had played Duluth, and the fact that he acknowledged this is the city of his birth was seen as icing on the cake because most of us were surprised he would ever come back here to play. That is because the man born Robert Zimmerman has been running from northern Minnesota pretty much since the day he graduated from Hibbing High School.
The title of "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" emphasizes that the singer-songwriter was a construct and attempts to chronicle the transformation from Robert Zimmerman to Bob Dylan. The key influence has always been considered to be Woody Guthrie, and Dylan's visit to Guthrie in the hospital is an iconic Sixties vision quest, but this documentary is able to work in many more names into the mix. The connections to the music at any time during the early stages of Dylan's career are only addressed tangentially, but that only underscores that this is not a music appreciation course on Bob Dylan, as much as that would be nice. This is an attempt to preserve the extant record on the first quarter century of Dylan's life, with an emphasize on the five years at the end of that period that represent the most creative and significant portion of his career, aided and abetted by talking heads the likes of Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Liam Clancy, and Al Kooper, who provide memories and retrospective insights (Kooper's story on how he ended up playing the organ on "Like a Rolling Stone" is a testament to serendipity in the music business).
Since Martin Scorsese was basically given 10 hours of film footage to shape into a four-hour documentary, the sense in which he served as "director" of "No Direction Home" would be in laying out the basic structure for film editor David Tedeschi. Obviously the main thrust of the documentary is the chronology of Dylan's life, which mixes archival footage with contemporary interviews. But this narrative plays out against Dylan's 1966 tour of Great Britain, already the focus of D.A. Pennebaker's documentary "Don't Look Back," during which he offended a large segment of his fans by picking up an electric guitar. Night after night Dylan would play an acoustic set to raves from his audience, and then return with a backing band for an electric set. Time and time again you hear audience members scream "Judas" and other insults, while Dylan tells the bad to just play louder. The main narrative and the subtext come together when Dylan shows up at the Newport Folk Festival supported by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and shocks the world. The U.K. tour kept the wound open and it was the motorcycle accident in the summer of 1966 that turned Dylan into a recluse that adds the exclamation point on the
One of the things that resulted from that decision was the song that "Rolling Stone" magazine picked as the top rock song of all-time, "Like a Rolling Stone," which also happened to be the first single Dylan ever released (it went to #2 on the Billboard charts). This was taken as clear evidence that Dylan was going "commercial," yet even the fans who booed and shouted curses when Dylan came on stage with the Band (nee the Hawks), applauded that one song. The problem was not that Dylan was becoming commercial ("Eve of Destruction" was a #1 song and that did not hurt Barry McGuire's bona fides as a folk rebel), but that for the most part he appeared to be giving up being the voice of his generation. In that regard the biggest slap in the face to those who worshipped him was not "Like a Rolling Stone," with its powerful onslaught of pointed lyrics, but "Mr. Tambourine Man," which we see him performing at a folk song workshop, because that is not a song that is going to send young people to the streets let alone to the barricades.
The interviews done with Dylan are actually the least important part of "No Direction Home," because if there is anything we have learned from listening to Dylan over the past four decades it is to let the music speak for itself. In all of the footage from the first half of the Sixties showing Dylan talking with reporters he repeatedly dodges their questions. They want to know what the songs are about and he refuses to tell them. It might seem like he is waiting for somebody smart enough to pose a question worth answering, but I have to believe he would never play that game. This is a man who insisted he grew up in Gallup, New Mexico rather than admit to being from Hibbing, and his willingness to sit in front of a film camera and talk about his past does not automatically mean increased veracity. I would like to believe that when Dylan talks about the musicians he listened to growing up that he is telling the truth, but I always wary.
What is potentially the most illuminating thing that Dylan says about himself in this four-hour documentary is his insistence that he was never a topical songwriter. If you can wrap your mind about the truth in that obvious lie, which is possible if you keep in mind Dylan's contemporaries on the folk scene in the early Sixties and remember that sometimes words have two meanings, then you can arrive at a better understanding of the truth inherent in Dylan's music. "No Direction Home" does not fully illuminate Bob Dylan, but that impossibility is hardly Scorsese's agenda. Ultimately, Scorsese is making the case for why Dylan should end up getting a Noble Prize for Literature some day soon. The only better way to make the case is to simply listen to the man's music.
 No Direction Home less then potential October 5, 2005
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
The idea of over 3 hours of Dylan related material could set your brain on fire. Woo-hoo! Yes, finally a masterpiece on a master.Hold on! Don't get your knickers in a knot! This movie contains ample amount of swearing, so it's not family friendly. The cuts can be jarring. Similar to the cuts in Last Waltz, the viewer can be left in a lurch. The song clips are scattered through out the whole movie out of order. Dylan is getting booed for playing electric at the beginning, middle and end of the movie. A less disjointed chronology would suit the flow better. Let us feel the sudden turn of the audience as they start booing instead of cheering after sitting so quiet in rapt attention. The forced subtitles of jeers from the audience wears thin after a while. This may be nice when shown on TV when you can't skip back a few frames to catch that phrase again with subtitles on, but do we really need to see "Judas" printed on the screen everytime? It's doesn't need translation... The movie does have lots of good material and is well worth it as a purchase on DVD just to have it around to watch once in a while, and it would have been nice to have a few 'clips' expanded into more screen time... (make the movie 4 hours or more... long movies don't scare me.) Joan Baez doing "Love is Just a Four Letter Word" is a high point in the extras. Her Dylan spin is great! Martin could have made this a really great movie, but instead, he seemed to slap it together without much care for the viewers enjoyment. I recently watched the Beatles Anthology, and that is a much more enjoyable movie, even though I enjoy Dylan more... Presentation: 2 / 5
Content: 4 /5
Overall: 3 / 5
Beautiful October 4, 2005
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Perhaps Bob Johnston says it best (on DVD 2): "He can't help what he's doing. I mean he's got the Holy Spirit about him, you can look at him and tell that."Johnston, the producer of Highway 61 Revisited, may only be reflecting on one historic set of sessions, but his comment may well apply to the whole of Dylan's early career. The Spirit hovers and breathes and kicks in and around Dylan. Scorsese's documentary focuses on Dylan's career up until his motorcycle accident in the summer of 1966. It is fittingly divided into two parts: 1) Dylan - channeling Woody Guthrie and finding a voice both young and ancient, and 2) Dylan's iconoclastic repudiation of 'protest' or 'topical' songwriting. Dylan and a cadre of songwriting peers tell the story, but the songs stand out beyond the history. This is a must-have for those who cherish these songs. It is a treasure of live performances and contextualized performances captivating in their own right. Best of all, it is a visual companion to Dylan's Chronicles.
how does it feel??.. September 27, 2005
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Great dvd very informative and lost of clips never seen b4
the press conferences were hilarious too
The authoritative Dylan film September 18, 2005
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
According to one newspaper in Canada, NDH is the best Scorsese film in five years. Having just seen the world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, I can confirm this. NDH lives up to the hype.NDH matches America's greatest filmmaker with its most influential musician. This is a straight doc, flashing back and forth between Dylan and the Hawks getting booed on U.K. stages in 1966 while chronologically telling the life story of Robert Zimmerman/Bob Dylan. There are generous interview clips with Dylan himself who is relaxed, yet candid (for Dylan). However, Joan Baez lights up the screen with vintage clips of her 60s folk performances with and without Dylan. Pete Seeger (folk music scene), Suze Rotolo (political activism), Al Kooper (recording Like A Rolling Stone) and Bobby Neuwirth (1965 UK tour) are supporting players who help tell the story, all looking light-years different from the 60s. Vintage film & video clips include those from the summer 1963 March on Washington (Dylan says King's speech still haunts him today), the Steve Allen Show, the Folk Songs show, Andy Warhol's screen test (an unearthed gem), 1965/66 press conferences, and best of all outtakes from EAT THE DOCUMENT. All video & film are presented in sharp quality. Sound is amazing and clear. The film takes its time in telling Dylan's story until 1966. The highlight is the infamous 1965 Newport concert where Dylan went electric. One eyewitness reports that 30% of the crowd was booing. Others say they couldn't even hear Dylan, since the band was drowning him out. Overall, Dylan comes off as a renegade, a prodigy, opportunist, visionary, traitor, genius, but always changing. Dylan himself says that people are constantly changing and that is the theme of the film. Dylan fans will of course flock to this movie, but even casual fans of Dylan, rock and pop culture will find this film engrossing. Though NDH is over three hours long, you never look at the clock. This is the authoritative Dylan film.
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