Inside Bob Dylan’s Jesus Years: Busy Being Born… Again!

You would think that an apparent 2 hour documentary on Bob Dylan would feature, I don’t know, maybe Bob Dylan. If you figured that’s what you’re getting here, think again. There are maybe 3-4 minutes total Dylan footage, and it’s almost always silent and looks like it came from a camcorder in the nosebleed sections of an arena. Even the constant music being played throughout these interview clips is not from Dylan, but rather the tribute band that happens to be run by the film’s producer and interviewer, Joel Gilbert. Gilbert struts around in the beginning striking a Dylan pose, and he looks somewhat like the folk star. After watching this film, I’m sure that he wants very much to be Bob Dylan.

The film is made up of nothing but interviews with very few pieces of archival footage, mostly of the Vineyard Church and not Dylan. While the piece claims to be a documentary on Dylan’s turn to Christianity and how it affected his music, most of the story is really about The Vineyard Church and its history. I’ll admit that I didn’t know much about the organization, but frankly I’m not sure I really wanted to. I put this thing in expecting it to be a detailed examination of the music itself and of this period in Dylan’s life. The participants are the far removed kind for the most part. This is one of those first cousin to the neighbor of the guy who owned the cat that crossed the road Dylan once thought about driving on kind of interviewees. Even if the material was interesting, you have to contend with Gilbert’s band playing over just about every word being spoken. I tried to find a way to separate that track and lower it, but to no avail. You won’t learn a darn thing new about the singer/songwriter, so this thing doesn’t even work for the diehard fans. It runs entirely too long at just over 2 hours, so that you will tire of it long before the final credits roll by. I ended up watching it in 3 sittings, because I just couldn’t handle more than about 40 minutes at a time.

Video

The film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.75:1. Most of this was shot on what looks like home digital video. It’s sharp enough, but there’s no real depth to the color. Of course, we’re just looking at people sitting there talking, so I won’t say that the video presentation takes anything away from the release. The widescreen image is not anamorphic, which I find quite rare these days.

Audio

The Dolby Digital 5.1 track makes almost no use of anything but the center speaker. Some of the music gets a good spread, but it’s a talky, so that’s what you get.

Special Features

1978 World Tour: This 15 minute piece is actually an extract from a longer film that this entire release was once a part of. It’s pretty much the same format and obviously some of the same interview sessions.

Dylan And Hurricane Carter Together In Prison – 1976: This is mostly television footage of the concert Dylan did in Clinton State Prison.

Photo Gallery: Hey, finally some real Dylan stuff. It’s pretty much stage snapshots.

MP3’s: Hey, just in case you loved Gilbert’s stuff, you can extract the MP3’s of his songs in your computer. I dare ya.

Final Thoughts

This is one of the worst discs I’ve ever had the displeasure of reviewing in my 6 plus years and nearly 700 reviews on this site. Don’t be misled. I know you might be a huge Bob Dylan fan and want to get your hands on everything you can. The problem is you won’t be getting your fix here at all. I was actually looking forward to seeing this, as I was relatively unfamiliar with his Christian music. My tastes lean more toward the classic stuff. If you’re a Christian man or woman, this won’t even be a rewarding examination of the faith. In fact, I found myself having some rather unchristian thoughts during most of the extremely tedious 2 hour running of this thing. I think my leg fell asleep. Lucky leg. Avoid it at all costs, or at least remove anything you might be tempted to throw at your nice screen. A documentary on Bob Dylan? Bob Dylan, “that’s what’s missing”.