don’t look back (d. d a pennebaker)

Pennebaker’s film is catnip for this reviewer. Dylan in London in ’65. That point on the crest of a rising wave when the world was turning, the times were changing, and the impish poet was at the epicentre of it all. With the laconic suaveness of a Swami. Bubbling with life and wit and energy. Whilst Great Britain tried to get its head about what it all meant. Young men in ties, women in starchy dresses, believing that this will be what normality will always look like.

At the same time as charting the locus of a global shift, Pennebaker’s doc is also great on the rigours of touring, The only time Dylan seems to move out of his gnostic mode is when he is forced to become mother hen, confronting a drunken Donovan and trying to get to the bottom of who threw a glass in the street. When he sings It’s All Over Baby Blue to a packed hotel room later that same night, there’s a beatific smile on his face.