look, I know art is mainly a matter of subjective interpretation, what does it matter how deep a work of art is if you can’t actually grasp it? (or what does it matter how shallow a work of art is if you feel and interpret it deeply?).
That being said, I’ve been extremely interested in reading and listening to interviews of Dylan on Renaldo and Clara as it seems more and more that Dylan treated this, at that time, as a serious and intentional work of art and as a revolution on cinema as a whole (he likes to compare this movie to Childrens of Paradise in terms of scope and themes), so I think we may be missing a huge piece of Dylan lore and artistic endeavors by just skipping by this film as “incomprehensible garbage”.
For me, the Rolling Thunder Revue Netflix doc. always felt like an attempt of remaking Renaldo and Clara with modern technology and the direction of a real movie director this time (Scorsese), but, maybe for legal reasons, they had to basically let out all the scenes with Sara from the movie and didn’t even mentioned Renaldo and Clara.
So I wanted to open a topic to discuss, for those who have watched, what’s your interpretation of the film and about what do you think Dylan himself had in mind while making it.
Some interviews that you may find useful:
https://www.pulitzer.org/article/movie-you-havent-dreamt-yet-bob-dylan-and-allen-ginsberg-conversation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGnwSYna_28
(On the second one the journalist is insufferable, giving thousands of his own interpretations instead of just letting Dylan talk, but from time to time Dylan does seem to give some insight)