Never heard of this music documentary covering one of the most surprising and fascinating periods in arguably the greatest living artist’s life? Well, there is a good reason for that. A very good reason.
During the late 1970s Bob Dylan sought purpose, meaning and perhaps comfort in his life. Nearly twenty years of being Bob Dylan in the public eye had apparently taken its toll and to the surprise of many, he embraced Jesus Christ and Christianity. The prophet had found a prophet. The first question is of course, why? The answer to which, we are never told.
Joel Gilbert, the writer/director is a Dylan nut. He’s made several films on him, written books, and he even plays Bob Dylan in a Bob Dylan tribute act called Highway 61 Revisited (of whom lend the music here). While this means he is undeniably approaching the topic in question seeking the same answers us Dylan fans, everything is just too amateur, rushed and lacking in content to give any. The production value is laughable, and obviously without budget to supply anything resembling archive footage (of literally anything) he resorts to using graphics that look like they are taken from clip art. Someone says the word guitar, up pops a picture of a guitar, and at one point Dylan’s face is pasted onto that of a spaceman to reference some inane point. The film only has a handful of interviewees - all of which are shot poorly, in bad light and bad positioning and are nothing but talking heads. To offset this we are given even worse production methods that include transforming the footage from colour to black and white (for no reason at all) and a constant shift of the position of the interviews on our screen from left to right to centre, like that bouncing DVD menu you get. Such is the static quality of the film it seems that anything and everything has been done in an attempt to make it more visually appealing but really only succeeds in making it feel like a GCSE media project.
Very little of the film is actually about Bob Dylan, more about people’s Christian experiences and a few people who experienced Bob during this period. But the same issue occurs when anyone is discussing Bob Dylan, Jesus period or otherwise - they don’t know him, they simply speculate. Jerry Waxler’s inclusion, as the producer of the two Christian albums (Slow Train Coming and Saved) proves the most vital and insightful. A backing singer from the album who tells us that black people didn’t listen to Bob Dylan and how great Jesus is... is not. Ultimately, this is a film about people who have an opinion – an opinion on Christianity, Bob Dylan and Bob Dylan’s Christianity. There are already more than enough (more valid) opinions on Dylan, and this film only makes you wish people would simply give up spouting them. Aside from the brief moments of insight captured by some of the interviewee’s, the main attraction comes in the man himself - a few audio recordings of live shows, him praising Jesus Christ. Ultimately there are maybe ten minutes of value in a documentary that spans ten times that. The term "for completest’s only" would even be pushing it here.