CINEMA: Masked & Anonymous

You could begin the story of Todd Haynes’s Dylan movie at the very beginning, about seven years ago, while Haynes was driving cross-country in his beat-up old Honda. But since Todd Haynes?s film about Dylan is as much about Todd Haynes as it is about Dylan (or maybe even more); and since Haynes is a filmmaker who, in midcareer at age 46, is doing his best to take the experimental into the multiplex; and, further, since those who don’t like the film are likely to consider it a kind of gorgeous indulgence, a bizarre experiment, the temptation is to skip the ordinary narrative introduction and begin at the end, or very near the end, in this case in the last few days of filming, on the outskirts of Montreal, where, way in the back of a dark and cavernous and disused factory, there was a white glowing light, like something in a dream. MORE