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Bob Dylan's music can't save 'Masked and Anonymous'
John Goodman, Luke Wilson and Bob Dylan star in 'Masked and Anonymous'
Lorey Sebastian/ Sony Pictures Classics
Director: Larry Charles
Stars: Bob Dylan, Jeff Bridges, John Goodman
MPAA rating: PG-13 for violence and language
Michael Machosky can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7901.
So Larry Charles' "Masked and Anonymous" couldn't exist without Bob Dylan, nor was it ever intended to. Even as a Dylan fan, I have to admit that this dark love letter to the Dylan mystique is clumsy and incoherent. It's hard to blame the man himself, though -- he seems like an unwitting participant in this fictional film, like he just woke up to find all these adoring Hollywood stars shooting around him.
John Goodman plays a sleazy concert promoter, putting together a benefit concert in a war-torn, impoverished future America. A mustachioed tin-pot dictator in garish gold braids gazes menacingly from posters on every corner. Jack Fate (Dylan) is sprung from jail for the concert. He travels by bus through a nation that looks more like Colombia -- or Iraq -- with its rogue paramilitary units, checkpoints and ruthless insurgents.
Giovanni Ribisi plays a disillusioned rebel who tells Jack his story on the bus and is gunned down at a checkpoint. Jeff Bridges is an addled, confrontational reporter who wants to interview Jack, but his ulterior agenda remains mysterious. Ed Harris shows up in blackface in what might or might not be Jack's imagination. Val Kilmer is barely recognizable as a dirty, misanthropic street philosopher. People who look awfully like the pope and Gandhi mill about in the background backstage.
Jessica Lange, Penelope Cruz, Mickey Rourke and Luke Wilson also make enigmatic, sometimes pointless appearances. Dylan, for his part, stumbles about with a perpetually blank, cadaverous expression, like he just wandered in from the set of the "Dawn of the Dead" remake next door.
Fortunately, the music performances are good, and the songs are as strong as most recent Dylan material. He even does a haunting version of "Dixie" -- yes, the song of the South -- that is about as surprising as if Dylan covered Mariah Carey.
"Masked and Anonymous" is clearly supposed to be as profound and cryptic as Dylan's music. But the writing faces a problem similar to those who cover Dylan's songs -- something's missing when the words are separated from Dylan's weary, broken voice. Plus, the words in this film stretch for a certain poetry that remains just out of reach.
Trying to divine the intentions of the mercurial sage of the '60s proved impossible for many a well-meaning acolyte before "Masked and Anonymous" and will likely defeat many more. Just about everyone brings his own interpretations of Dylan's music to the table. Even Jack seems to weary of this communication breakdown: "Truth and beauty are in the eye of the beholder," he mutters at the end. "I stopped trying to figure it all out a long time ago."
