This was excruciating. The damage Bohemian Rhapsody did for the genre needs to be studied. Apparently all you need to do is spend sixty million dollars to film great actors do cover songs, and the masses will eat it up.
This movie will do everything except depict any part of Bob Dylan's life outside of performative song. The sheer amount of musical numbers is mind numbing, and the evolution of his music is trite when there’s no attempt at insight. This is a glorified cover concert.
The core of this movie can't shake the music biopic formula, but it's so rare that such a big swing is made for the visual execution. The musical sequences have an energy to them that don't feel like slavish recreations of real life events. As someone who has literally never heard of Robbie Williams (or his music) prior to watching the movie, the emotional moments packed punches that were only possible because of the freedom from live action limitations.
Soft spoken naturalistic depiction of a reality that is completely heartbreaking. There’s an authenticity and rawness that makes this hard to watch knowing that the events are looming, but it’s captured with care and nuance. Completely taken aback by how much emotion is packed in the final scene with minimal dialogue.
There is no pulse here; not a single sign of life. In deadpan fashion, everyone behaves like an NPC, but there's no weight behind it. The editing is god awful with the camera lingering in virtually every scene, to fill time. Ironically, much like The Dead Don't Die, which is directly referenced, the script isn't sharp enough to facilitate how this was executed.
