Putting a famous name in your title is a cynical move.
I knew that, so I was aware. Melbourne on Dylan: a short documentary film is supposedly about the relationship of the very large city of Melbourne (population 2 million in 1965; 5 million in 2023) with the legendary American singer.
I imagined the documentary would meander through the influence of Bob Dylan on the wider musical culture of Melbourne’s incredible diaspora. Instead, it was a series of interviews with a short - very short - number of the ageing hipster class from suburbs like (but not limited to) Kew, shot in retro bars, inner-city shabby chic lounge rooms, empty theatres and of course in front of the inevitably clichéd recording studio mixing desks.
The documentary's fatal flaw saw these pet interviewees' answers to unheard questions cut together, so that as an aggregate, the answers were all the same; while, towards the end of the insufferably repetitive interviews, seemingly dazed interviewees told incredulously, like adherents of a fringe religion seeing their god for the first and last time, of 'breathing the same air' as Dylan (as in attending one of his concerts). The documentary then slid into semi-creepiness, becoming a pre-posthumous obituary in which interviewees were asked to imagine life without Bob Dylan. Talk about knockin' on heaven's door.
Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir noted in an August 2006 Mojo magazine interview, 'Jerry (Garcia) was the only other human on earth that knew what it was like to be Bob Dylan, and to have all that stuff coming through your head, and at the same time being beset with a fan base that probably makes more of you than you are comfortable with’.
Bob Dylan as a subject is obviously big enough and interesting enough to allow the viewer to turn a blind eye to these obvious faults. But only just. Archival footage in the movie was scant: a single black-and-white photograph of Dylan in an airport crowd scene at Essendon Aerodrome was manipulated, enlarged, zoomed in on, cropped; and was used furthermore as the documentary's publicity shot. In a post-screening speech, the director Chris Franklin revealed that a woman had approached him after an earlier screening to say that she was the daughter of one of the bystanders - a reporter - in the shot. A nice coincidence; but calling to mind - like the previously mentioned 'breathing the same air' - the sardonic lyric of the 1931 Harold Farjeon song, 'I've danced with a man who's danced with a woman who's danced with the Prince of Wales’.
In other words, big deal.
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Kitchen Hand three-word review: Positively 4th Rate.
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Melbourne on Dylan. Directed by Chris Franklin, 2022. Various cinemas.
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