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From betrayed folks who saw their hero go electric in 1965 to the polarized masses who suddenly heard him bewilderingly preaching the word of God in the late ’70s, most Bob Dylan fans have a history of leaving a of his somewhat confused shows. For me – and, I imagine, for many others who have come to him in the 21st century – it involved seeing him at a baseball stadium in my hometown, where he spent the entire show in front of the audience, playing mostly from the keyboard and barking through almost unrecognizable versions of the songs I fell in love with through his records.
Maybe I was expecting something more like the performances in Kingdom of Shadows, her gorgeous new concert film, which feels like an elegant art project despite debuting via live streaming platform Veeps and Live Nation last night. With a slung guitar and a masked backing band whose mostly acoustic instrumentation resembles different shades of the same muted blue, the 80-year-old icon sings clearly, melodically, beautifully. Rendered in black and white, Dylan sometimes seems to want to burst across the screen, gesturing passionately, staggering slightly.
The film is subtitled “The First Songs of Bob Dylan”, but this framing is a bit abusive. None of his 13 songs predate his reinvention of mid-1960s rock, and the most recent inclusion is a mind-boggling rendition of “What Was It You Wanted” from 1989 Oh mercy. Showcase songs from the album instead of major singles, Kingdom of Shadows leans towards the 12 bar blues vamps, love songs and deep cuts that have populated his recent setlists.
Apparently recorded in a studio, the performances were arranged for the film in an interconnected series of music videos by director Alma Har’el, whose resume includes the 2019 independent film. honey boy as well as videos for Sigur Rós and Beirut. She has a knack for visualizing the haunted bar production that Dylan has favored on his modern studio albums: as he sings in dark rooms filled with cigarette smoke and lamps, models and Western characters, it all takes on a surreal and ghostly quality.
With minor costume and set changes, it performs for a host of former patrons who lose their shit on the dance floor during “Watching the River Flow”, and in front of a sea of impartial cowboys watching their beers. while he sings “Just Like Tom The Thumb Blues. At times like these, the title of Kingdom of Shadows is not only a reference to Dylan’s songwriting world, but to the places and audiences where he imagines himself delivering his songs – a personal touch that gives a bittersweet, elegiac quality to songs like ” Forever Young “and” It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. (In this sense, the atmosphere is reminiscent of David Lynch’s self-referential sprawl. Twin Peaks: the return– and not just because of the aesthetic similarity to Roadhouse’s performances that ended most of its episodes.)
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