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MASKED AND ANONYMOUS
by Peter Sobczynski

August 15, 2003

(out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Written by Rene Fontaine & Sergei Petrov. Directed by Larry Charles. Starring Bob Dylan, Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, John Goodman, Jessica Lange and Luke Wilson

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: if you are not a stone-cold Bob Dylan fanatic, do not even think about going to see "Masked and Anonymous:, his latest cinematic experiment. You will hate it with every fiber of your being and not even the lure of the all-star cast will make up for the fact that this is a Dylan film through and through-he stars in it, he co-wrote it (under a pseudonym) and his music fills up the soundtrack. And I do mean stone-cold, not just one of these people who picked up, say, the CD of "Time Out of Mind" because USA Today gave it a good review. You have to be one of those dedicated souls who ran out to pick up "Down in the Groove" or "Under the Red Sky" the day they went on sale, actually rented "Hearts of Fire" on video and stuck with him through his unsettling experiments with both born-again Christianity and the Grateful Dead. I am one of those people and because of that, I consider the film to be one of the great achievements of the year and a key piece of the puzzle that is Bob Dylan. Those less inclined to such fanaticism may want to set this review down right now and spend your time on something else.

The film is set in an unknown country (imagine a post-apocalyptic blend of the U.S. and Mexico) that is currently being ravaged by a civil war while the aging dictator in power lays dying. A benefit concert of some sort is being organized by sleazy promoter Uncle Sweetheart (John Goodman), supposedly to aid the downtrodden but mostly to line his own pockets. Nina (Jessica Lange), his TV producer ex-wife, is demanding that a big-name star appear on the bill to attract viewers. When the top names reject him, Uncle Sweetheart pulls out one last name-the long-lost Jack Fate, a mysterious and reclusive "legend" whose career and catalogue are suprisingly similar to Bob Dylan’s. Nina protests that no one remembers him but, lacking any other name, arranges for Jack to be sprung from prison (for an unknown crime, unless it is the age-old crime of being to pure and good for this world) and come to the coast to perform.

After a bus trip that allows him to see how the country has devolved, Jack finally arrives and the producers immediately try to shoehorn his image into something more marketable: because he has a reputation as a "protest singer", he is asked to perform "protest songs" that are so hackneyed and familiar through commercialization that they have lost all meaning-titles like "Won’t Get Fooled Again" and "For What Its Worth". Shrugging these suggestions off (his idea of a protest song is "Dixie"), Jack spends his pre-concert time rehearsing with his band, reuniting with an old buddy (Luke Wilson) and confronting various ghosts from his past. At the same time, Tom Friend (Jeff Bridges), a once-idealistic journalist smells a rat and pops up, along with his hippie girlfriend (Penelope Cruz) to interview Jack and get "the answers".

By the standards of conventional narrative, "Masked and Anonymous" is a mess-the above description makes it sound a lot more straightforward than it actually is (for example, it also shoehorns in appearances from, in alphabetical order, Angela Bassett, Bruce Dern, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer, Cheech Marin, Chris Penn, Giovanni Ribisi, Christian Slater and Fred Ward, among others). However, Dylan and co-writer/director Larry Charles (a veteran of "Seinfeld" and "Mad About You" aren’t interested in making a conventional narrative. What they are attempting to do is the seemingly impossible task of making the film equivalent of a Bob Dylan song. Many of Dylan’s best tunes (think "Desolation Row" or "Brownsville Girl") are epic in scope, filled with imagery inspired by classic cinema and literature and told in a style in which nothing is specific but the feelings are somehow understood. (People are still trying to figure out the "meaning" behind his songs and that is why they still remain fresh decades later.) Most films today are like classic pop songs-the message is simple and their success depends on if the presentation is attractive enough. "Masked and Anonymous", on the other hand, really does come off like a Dylan song-it lends itself to any number of explanations, it requires multiple exposures to grasp what is going on and it will doubtlessly mean different things to different viewers at different times.

One of the chief obstacles that Charles, as director, has to overcome is the fact that while Bob Dylan may by a mythical presence (and clearly the reason why so many stars signed on to do what are, for the most part, little more than extended cameos), he isn’t what one would consider to be an "actor" by any stretch of the imagination. (You won’t leave the film thinking that Polanski should have cast him in "The Pianist".) To get around this, Charles simply does away with the urge to portray Jack Fate as a normal person and plays up to the mythic qualities of both the character and the performer-the other actors, many of them clearly intimidated by his presence, nervously deliver monologues to which he responds with nothing more than an enigmatic phrase or two. The only actor who directly engages Dylan is Mickey Rourke, who plays an ambitious politico out to seize power; Rourke is confident enough in his own hipster myth to go head-to-head with Dylan and their scene is the most interesting dramatic moment in the film.

In the film, Charles also gets some of the most electrifying Bob Dylan performance footage ever captured on film. Part of this is because the back-up band (supposedly a Jack Fate cover band called "Simple Twist of Fate") is the band that Dylan has been touring with for the better part of the last decade-he is comfortable with them and they crank out seven songs, including wonderfully seedy renditions of "Down in the Flood" and "Cold Irons Bound" and a lovely version of the lesser-known "I’ll Remember You" (the rest of the soundtrack is filled mostly with world-music covers of Dylan classics, including an Italian-rap reconception of "Like a Rolling Stone" and a beautiful "Most of the Time" by Swedish singer Sophie Zelmani). The other reason that the performances work is that Charles refuses to indulge in cinematic tricks during those sequences-they are shot straight on with a wide-angle lens and give the impression of a genuinely intimate performance.

"Masked and Anonymous" is not a perfect film and there are several elements in it that are frankly embarrassing-the cameos by Val Kilmer and Ed Harris are especially inexplicable (the former seem to be doing Jim Morrison again while the latter is made up to look like-I swear-Al Jolson in "The Jazz Singer") and there is a scene in which an adorable little black girl is trotted out to sing "The Times They Are A-Changing"-a nice rendition, I must add- to a vaguely benevolent Jack Fate that is cringe-inducing. However, there are enough rich and memorable moments in the film (Dylanologists will go nuts over the in-jokes packed into every moment-check out the titles on the TV network’s programming board) to make it absolutely indispensable to keepers of the flame. There are some funny moments, great performances and some bits of dialogue that could only have come from the mind of Dylan. And if it doesn’t make any sense as it comes to a close, perhaps the closing Jack Fate monologue will help: "Sometimes it’s not enough to know the meaning of things. Sometimes you have to know what things don’t mean as well...Truth and beauty are in the eye of the beholder. I stopped trying to figure everything out a long time ago."
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-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2003 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.