Start with D.A. Pennebaker’s “Don’t Look Back,” a crackling documentary about Dylan’s 1965 tour of England, then move on to Martin Scorsese’s wide-ranging 2005 doc “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.” If you’re at all interested in understanding Dylan, these are the must-sees.
As for biopics, Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There” is a lively, experimental consideration of Dylan throughout the years. Here you’ll get to see actors as different as Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, and, yes, Cate Blanchett play the many artistic iterations of Dylan.
If you want to see Dylan act, you can do no better than Sam Peckinpah’s revisionist Western “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.” If you want to see why he doesn’t act more often (unless he’s explicitly playing himself), feast your eyes on the accursed wretchedness of Richard Marquand’s 1987 flop “Hearts of Fire” or Larry Charles’ unwatchable “Masked and Anonymous” (where he’s basically playing himself).
