Cinema: Pop Prophet

Don't Look Back. This picture also explores the hysterical fringes of the rock-music world. While Privilege only affects the style of a documentary, Don't Look Back really is one. When angry young Folk Singer Bob Dylan toured England in the spring of 1965, his entourage included a friendly spy in the person of Film Maker D. A. Pennebaker. Out of that journey, Pennebaker has created a 96-minute essay in cinematic truthtelling that may explain how the thin-voiced bard of the bedraggled became a subcultural prophet and a millionaire by combining the most resonant cliches of alienation and some not very distinguished music.

Pious platitudes like "message" and "communication" flicker like votive candles as Dylan spars with journalists, dodges hordes of adoring teeny-boppers with majestic modesty, picks petty backstage fights with anybody in sight, and freezes into zombie-like immobility as soon as all backs are turned. And yet there are also shots of Dylan onstage, binding his audiences into an almost tangible silence. Here the camera bears witness that the Dylan presence, despite its artiness, commands an irresistible fascination for the young.