Word: renaldo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...having seen Bob Dylan's movie Renaldo and Clara yet, I have no quarrel with the review [Feb. 20]. However, I do disagree with the statements in the last paragraph. Dylan may indeed be trying "to hold on to the Woodstock ethos of the counterculture," but what is wrong with that? In my opinion, the Woodstock era was the finest hour in America history. Sure, times change, but not everyone has cut their hair and forgotten their dreams...
When Dylan bursts into song in Renaldo and Clara, dozens of powerful memories come flooding back; a dreadful film becomes a resonant historical document. If its creator had any sense, Renaldo and Clara would be locked away in a time capsule somewhere, rather than exhibited in movie theaters...
...accounts for less than half of the movie's four-hour running time. The rest consists of improvised fictional scenes that are meant to impart Dylan's metaphysical view of the universe and himself - though not necessarily in that order. Dylan plays a masked entertainer named Renaldo...
...film does produce is an unflattering portrait of Bob Dylan's ego. Almost all the characters - including the performers he elbows off-screen in the musical numbers - treat the hero with dumb-struck reverence. Grateful Indians and blacks gleefully accept his political support. Worse still, Dylan fills Renaldo and Clara with self-deifying Christ images. At least we are spared a crucifixion scene...
...there are no laughs in Renaldo and Clara, there is some unintentional pathos...