Masked and Anonymous: It's Life and Life Only

Masked and Anonymous

If I had believed the majority of critics, I never would have ventured to the theater to see Bob Dylan's new movie, Masked and Anonymous. I am glad I did not listen to the critics. Unfortunately, most moviegoers and theater owners did. The movie played in Eugene a scarce week (during which I saw the movie twice); other runs, where they even occurred, were similarly abbreviated.

For those who have not seen it, Masked and Anonymous is a film that spills out of almost any box into which one might attempt to put it. The film follows a washed-up rock star (Jack Fate, played by Dylan) as he is sprung from jail to play a benefit concert to help the victims of a war-torn nation presided over by a dying dictator (who turns out to be his father, long estranged from him). The setting, judging from all the evidence, is an intensified, gestalt version of here in the USA, right now, or in the very near future.

On one level, the movie is a political and social satire about modern America. On another, it's a dreamlike, archetypal personal journey full of metaphysical allegory. On another, it's a portrait of the intersection of fame and art in our culture, and how that affects the main character, Dylan (a.k.a. Fate). On another, it's pure autobiography, seen through a kaleidoscope of creative shape-shifting and inspired lunacy.

Music saturates the film, mixing cover versions of Dylan songs by artists from around the world, singing in a variety of languages, with new live recordings by Dylan and his band (here called "Simple Twist of Fate") performing on the set's soundstage. Even without considering the many other dimensions of Masked and Anonymous, music in this film is no less important than it is in A Hard Day's Night, and the soundtrack is at least as compelling and infectious as those early Beatles tunes--and certainly more thought-provoking and adventurous. The two plots are also similar, tracing the events leading to a big concert which almost (or actually) goes somewhat awry, due to technical difficulties, musicians "missing in action," and events beyond anyone's control. Just as A Hard Day's Night is a portrait of Beatlemania, and the trials that John, Paul, George, and Ringo endure as musical celebrities in a world gone mad around them, Masked and Anonymous examines what it's like to be Bob Dylan, four decades after he acquired the fame that he's never been able to shake. In true Dylan form, Masked and Anonymous does not attempt to present a purely literal, realistic representation of his life, but rather a story dealing in crazily exaggerated distillations of the forces at play beneath surface details (examined less superficially, these distillations can be seen as not exaggerated at all, just an unmasking of what actually goes on in the world).

Like A Hard Day's Night, Masked and Anonymous is also suffused with a droll humor, with the Beatles' youthful exuberance replaced by the older Dylan's darker, slyer exuberance. Some of the humor is visual (Tom Friend, the superstar reporter, wears an electronic monitor on his ankle, from which his Editor frees him only when he has a big story to pursue), some of it verbal (wordplays and off-handed jokes abound), some of it in the form of outrageous caricatures, bizarre plot twists, and surrealistic details (on his way down a shadowy corridor between the backstage bathroom and the soundstage, behind a door marked "Man-Eating Chicken," Fate encounters a man eating a huge bucketful of fried chicken). Some of it is generally accessible (when an employee asks, "So, why a benefit concert?," network executive Nina Veronica answers, "Well, how else do you get rock stars to do television? Either give 'em a cause or give 'em an award"). And some takes the form of "in jokes" requiring at least a basic familiarity with Dylan's career (when Nina worries, "Are his songs going to be recognizable?," promoter Uncle Sweetheart reassures her, "All of his songs are recognizable, even if they're not recognizable"; at another point, Tom Friend asks Jack, "What about Hendrix, Jack? You remember Hendrix at Woodstock? I'm just curious; you weren't there, were you? Why? Where were you?").

To their credit, most critics have acknowledged the high quality of the music, but that's where their appreciation stops. Judging from the reviews, this is a movie filled with big-egoed, big-name actors, vying with each other for attention while the central character, Dylan, "doesn't act," and apparently doesn't know how.

I experienced the film differently. Since I watch almost no Hollywood movies, I recognized none of these actors. I saw no "ego wars," only a bunch of people having a good time with an extremely creative, unusual script. A comparison of the written screenplay (revised draft, 5/21/02, credited to Sergei Petrov and Rene Fontaine, pseudonyms for director Larry Charles and Bob Dylan) with the final film version reveals that a fair amount of improvisation occurred during filming. Each actor was obviously given her or his part and told to run with it--much in the spirit of Dylan's live concerts, in which no song is ever played exactly the same way twice. An extremely low-budget film shot in just three weeks, all in Los Angeles, Masked and Anonymous looks as if it was a refreshing change of pace for these actors. Could the perceived "ego wars" and "vanity" of the participants possibly be a projection on the part of the critics? Could it be the critics who are actually insecure, engaging in ego struggles, trying to puff up their own self-images by putting others down? I may be naive, but watching the movie on its own terms, without much familiarity with Hollywood conventions or Hollywood stars, I didn't see any of the alleged infractions.

Nor was it my impression that Dylan "couldn't act." To the contrary, he seemed to play himself perfectly; he certainly knows the character better than anyone else. In real life, as well as on film and on stage, Dylan is by all reports an introverted, extremely quiet person, his face and his body language revealing a complex inner life that does not always find its way easily into spoken words or into a reassuring, demonstrative, outgoing demeanor. His music is where he most easily uses words to speak, and in this film, as well as in life, it is during the musical performances where he seems to feel most free, where he can be himself without feeling hemmed in by circumstances (shady business dealings, political corruption, social repression, and a raging civil war) or by others' limited imaginations and distorted perceptions of him. In Masked and Anonymous, he lets many of the other actors speak for him (in this dreamlike world, every character can in fact be seen as a facet of Dylan himself), but the words he gives to Jack Fate are consistently insightful, and also frequently laced with the kind of koan-like riddles for which Dylan is known (and which are the bane of literal-minded critics).

In short, in this movie, the central actor acts and reacts just as Bob Dylan (or Jack Fate) would act. And, despite many critics' inability to perceive this, he seems to have been enjoying himself immensely--which is as it should be, since the results of his creative and comic genius were playing themselves out before his eyes at every moment of the filming. Unbelievably, some critics have even cast Dylan as an unwilling participant in this project, due to his taciturn style--which is his style, since there is too much going on below the surface to craft himself into a simplified "sound bite" personality. "If my thought-dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine," he once sang, and, having seen the visual evidence of Dylan's thought-dreams in Masked and Anonymous, that's what many critics seem to have been doing.

Another complaint voiced by critics is that the film is "disjointed," "confusing," "too difficult to understand." It is said to exist in an "alternate universe" with only a tenuous connection to reality. The plot is said to be hard to follow (hard to follow? it's pretty simple!), characters come and go, sometimes never to reappear in the story (does this remind anyone of anything? maybe real life?), and the time and setting are unclear (only, I think, to someone who can't add or subtract, knows no geography, has been following no current events, and has been living in a sensory deprivation chamber).

So what is this "alternate universe" that so confuses and infuriates critics? What are Dylan's thought-dreams saying? And why doesn't the mass media want to listen?

One clue may lie in the film's treatment of the mass media itself. "Newspapers are all a false map of the world," journalist Tom Friend tells his girlfriend, Pagan Lace. Nina Veronica remarks that "these [television] network heads are the gods....They play on our dream states like a concertina," to which Uncle Sweetheart replies, "They're not gods, they're nothing but preachers and lawyers and hired agents and professional speakers. They all have vested interests." In a segment excised from the final version of the film, a "Man on the Run" reports, "They're filming a TV show back there. You watch TV for any considerable length of time, you think that everybody's either rich or that he's about to die a horrible death." And in his first speech following the death of Fate's father, new president Edmund declares, "As you know, we have captured the cultural institutions of this country. The institutions that shape the souls of the young. The schools, the colleges, the movies, music, and the arts. They all belong to us now. At the moment, we are giving people a new identity, and erasing the collective memory. We are rewriting the history books."

In this setting, the price of dissent is steep. The president demands allegiance, and despite his brutish persona, he receives it, at least within the ranks of the government. Early in the film, bitter about the state of his nation's politics, Uncle Sweetheart greets two bill-collectors as "the dark princes, the democratic republicans... working for a barbarian who can scarcely spell his own name." Just before the benefit concert is scheduled to begin, Jack Fate encounters an apparition: the ghost of Oscar Vogel, a prominent banjo player who'd died under mysterious circumstances after speaking out against the excesses of the dictator's regime. "Everything was going great as long as you kept your mouth shut. But your father was doing things that were wrong. His desire for retaliation and revenge was too strong, which caused a lot of injustice, lies and bad things. I was the only one in any position to say anything. Everyone else was too scared. I had the show. I had a forum. So, I spoke out. It's not what goes in the mouth, it's what comes out that counts. They said it was an accident. Some even said it was a suicide."

Denial is endemic in this world. Those who are able to, hide from their society's disintegration into violence. Like someone turning a blind eye to the daily war-related deaths in Iraq, or to the ravages of gang warfare in this country, one of Nina's network employees seems oblivious to what is happening. And the senselessness of this cycle of violence is obvious to anyone willing to look:

On a bus taking him from jail to the benefit concert, Jack Fate sits next to a Soldier, whose tale sums up the stories of many sincere, "righteous" combatants who fall prey to the inherent contradictions of a "just" war: "I'm from a small village in the mountains. We don't even have a doctor. So I joined the rebels....Pretty soon, I saw the rebel movement was corrupt. The leadership were lying to the people. They wanted to replace the old government with a new government which was just as bad....A small army of counter-revolutionaries grew to battle the rebels in the mountains....I changed sides. No one ever noticed. This new movement was fighting for the truth the rebels supposedly believed in but really didn't. Then I realized that this movement was funded by the very government I wanted to topple. By that time, I realized I didn't want the government to fall...I joined the government forces....Then one day, we wiped out a small village. We were told something about rebels having infiltrated. But it was a lie. The men were already dead or old. All that was left were women and children. It was my village."

In a speech that could come straight from the pages of 1984 , the new President, Edmund, advocates the heightened use of force, neatly and un-self-consciously laying bare the absurdity of violence as a solution to anything: "Nothing was more important to our President than bringing peace to this war-torn country. Peace, a lasting peace, can only be achieved through strength. So, in my first act as the new President, as the leader of the new government, this new regime, we will begin to deploy troops immediately to the southern regions, we will resume the bombing in the jungle. We will begin executing and enslaving prisoners, and that includes those who have preached diversity but who have never practiced it, and those who decried intolerance but were the least tolerant of all. We shall deal with them in a harsh manner."

Does this logic sound familiar? Anyone who has not kept his or her head in the sand for the last three years may indeed experience some glimmers of recognition here. Could the mass media's role in promoting recent US policies have anything to do with their general reception of this movie?

The government in Masked and Anonymous wages war against its own people, and imprisons all those who step out of line. As the Radio Preacher explains, "The only power the government has is to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, you make them. You make so many things a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws." The prison guard reminds the newly-freed Jack Fate that "Keeping people from being free is a big business."

But literal imprisonment is not the only means by which people lose their freedom and dignity. According to the Animal Wrangler, "In most societies they used to sacrifice animals. Bulls and sheep and things. In place of human beings. But today we do it the other way around, we sacrifice the human being. Like the Aztecs, the Incas, like the big corporations." Nina observes that "The government only exists to help business." In an excised scene, Crew Guy #1 declares, "I'm getting weary of living by this clock. It's all smoke and mirrors. I want to live in real time, in the terms of day and night. I'm sick of this merchants' time, businessman's time, clocks and bells signaling the hours." But since, as Uncle Sweetheart asserts, "money is the mother's milk of politics," those with the money are controlling the political life, and thereby the daily life and culture, of this society.

In another excised scene, the Fortune Teller warns Tom Friend, "You're living in a nation that's dying a slow death. Look at the faces on your money. Slave owners and Indian fighters....Every commitment, every truth, every ideal, everything of beauty, all these things are being stripped away." And Uncle Sweetheart gives some historical perspective on this cultural disintegration: "You know when the Roman Empire fell? You know what Caesar and the rest of them Romans were doing when the barbarians were at the gates? ...Shooting craps and gambling."

Against this bleak backdrop, however, we do find reasons for hope. Among other things, Masked and Anonymous is an ecologist's movie, and the earth and its creatures offer redemption from human pathologies. The Radio Preacher reminds his audience that "The earth was here long before these gods were." When pressure from the network threatens to remake Fate's setlist, his sidekick, Bobby Cupid, declares, "Screw this so-called concert, Jack. These cats are just addicted to lights and sound. Let's go someplace where we can see the earth and sky." Again in an excised scene, the Fortune Teller tells Tom Friend, "There are a few things you should be concerned about. Things could take an upward turn, but you will first have to give up your high-tech lifestyle."

The Animal Wrangler is among the most eloquent voices in this movie. Reviewers have characterized him as a "loony," and in some respects he is, but he is also in touch with basic truths apparently forgotten by most in his society. Speaking about animals, he tells Jack that "They have no time to bother with success or getting rich. They have no fantasies of glory. They don't borrow money to buy things that decrease in value while they own it. See, they're beautiful 'cause they just are. They do what they do. A lion don't try to be a tiger. A rabbit don't do an impression of a monkey. They don't try to be what they're not. Unlike us. Us human beings....These animals, they were here first. They roamed freely, each one with its own identity and place. Animals should be cherished. They bring joy to the world."

Although the Wrangler's love for animals veers into misanthropy, into a separative extremism rather than an integrative ecological worldview, his questions and misgivings about human beings must be shared, at one time or another, by every concerned, aware person witnessing human effects on the planet: "You know who's destroying the earth? Not the animals. The tiger, the lion, the cheetah, the snake, the monkey, the baboon, the giraffe, the bear, the panther, the dog, fish, the birds, all perfect in their original forms. Then--man came in. Who created him and for what purpose? Still a mystery. Why is he here? A mystery. He's a trespasser. Doesn't know his place....A spoiler, an agitator, stirs up trouble wherever he goes. The zoo, the aquarium, prisons for animals....I avoid looking at human beings. They disgust me so much with their atom bombs and blow dryers and automobiles. They build hospitals as shrines to the diseases they create. Human beings are alone with their secrets. Masked and Anonymous. No one truly knows them....The only righteous human beings in my book are the children and the elderly."

In a voiceover later in the film, Jack Fate offers a more hopeful take on the human presence on earth, affirming that wholeness and meaning are within each person's reach: "If I know nothing else, I know at least one thing is true: that the sacred is in the ordinary, the common things in life. They tell you that everything is nonsense, that the laws of nature are nonsense, gravity is nonsense, relationships don't exist, jobs don't exist. Everything is up for grabs and there's no cause of anything. That's what they'd like you to believe."

But "they" will not necessarily have the last word, if Jack Fate or the six-year-old who momentarily steals the show with her rendition of "The Times They Are A-Changin'" have anything to do with it.

Society is disastrously off course, and most of its members are captive to some form of illusion, yet this is clearly not a case of good people falling victim to evil people, or of villains battling heroes. "Us vs. Them" is exposed as a miserably myopic worldview and a terrible basis for public policy and individual action. While in some senses the characters in Masked and Anonymous are caricatures (Tom Friend, for example, plays the self-involved, sixties-obsessed journalist on steroids), they are also all sympathetic figures in that we understand that they are all damaged, "bent out of shape by society's pliers." No one is inherently evil; rather, each individual struggles with circumstances somewhat beyond personal control. The megalomaniac Edmund has risen from a childhood of servitude, and doesn't know when to stop taking back his power. Uncle Sweetheart's sleazy business dealings are a response to foolish investments gone sour, an attempt to keep food on his family's table and protect his wife and children from the horrors around them. Even the henchmen and armed guards of the military state have clearly taken those roles just because they need a job.

As a result, nearly every character, at one point or another, has something profound and true to say about life. This exchange is typical:

The fact that "everyone in Masked and Anonymous is a philosopher" has annoyed some critics, who would apparently be much more comfortable with a set of characters who do not question or search for meaning, who "get with the program" more easily and with less reflection or complaint.

Instead of seeing people as divided into "good guys" and "bad guys" (a central tenet of some rather prominent political players of late), Masked and Anonymous suggest that we are all fallible human beings attempting to cope with the sometimes hostile environment of the modern world. Hemmed in by tragic circumstances, the characters in this film respond with varying degrees of grace to the mass psychoses gripping their society. It is difficult not to feel compassion for them, and easy to agree with Fate's conclusion:

Awakening compassion, too, is the acknowledgment that suffering (or at least pain or loss) is in some sense a condition of existence, and that we don't "deserve" it--it just is. In an exchange that again embodies the movie's droll humor, the newly-freed Jack Fate muses, with a straight face, on the sometimes arbitrary nature of loss:

Both Uncle Sweetheart and Bobby Cupid warn that "The more you know, the more you'll suffer," and yet this movie does not seem to advocate keeping oneself ignorant, but instead becoming conscious of the reality, however painful, that surrounds us. Happiness is not guaranteed, and not to be achieved through grasping. As Jack Fate observes in a voiceover late in the movie, "Some of us pursue perfection and virtue, and if we're lucky we catch up to it, but happiness can't be pursued. It either comes to you or it don't. You can always say, if only this, or if only that, but 'if only' is a state of mind we get into when we feel deprived."

Masked and Anonymous never left me feeling deprived. It struck me as a rich, creative endeavor far more worthy of popular attention than most movies with hundreds of times its budget. Even if the rest of it escapes you, it's worth the price of admission for the music alone. And, as I hope this essay has demonstrated, if the rest of it does escape you, a lot has escaped you. Apparently, you're not alone in that--but in a world full of enlightened critics who had learned to look past the bugs on their windshields, you might be.

Posterity may yet smile upon Masked and Anonymous, and likely will, if we as human beings make the changes necessary to survive into a recognizable posterity.

My thanks to David Vest for his assistance in obtaining a copy of the screenplay, which can be found in its entirety (by those with sufficiently up-to-date internet browsers) at http://www.peterstonebrown.com/M&A/Index.html.. David's own excellent essay, "Masked and Anonymous: Bob Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America," reaches many of the same conclusions I have reached. It originally appeared in CounterPunch and can be found at http://www. counterpunch.org/vest09202003.html. David's CD, Way Down Here, recorded with The Willing Victims, is reviewed on page 59 of this issue.

Chris Roth edits Talking Leaves. His previous Dylan-inspired article, "An Ecological Future: How Does It Feel?" (in the Winter 1999 TL) treats similar themes from a different, five-years-less-mature-but-not-entirely-invalid perspective. He spends his discretionary income on guitar strings.

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Masked and Anonymous: It's Life and Life Only

Voices of the Earth: People in Harmony: v13 n03 Talking Leaves Magazine Winter 2004

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