The first time I saw Masked And Anonymous, twenty years ago, I felt like a dog hit on the head with a pencil. Total, abject confusion. Rewatching it recently, the experience was not too different. A collaboration between Dylan and Seinfeld writer and director Larry Charles—Dylan and Charles wrote the script together, and Charles directed—I guess the film could broadly be described as a rambling, slapstick comedy about imminent apocalypse. Seemingly inspired by Stanley Kramer’s 1963 kitchen-sink-gag-fest It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, whose oddball cast of thousands included everyone from Mickey Rooney to Spencer Tracy to Ethel Merman to Sid Caesar, Dylan and Charles appear to have written a part for every one of their favorite working actors: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Luke Wilson, Mickey Rourke and Angela Bassett are just some of the names that turn up. Dylan himself stars as Jack Fate, a once legendary folk singer who has hit the skids and ended up in prison. Now listen: I don’t feel like I am really the person to try to explain the plot—my personal grasp on reality is already fairly shaky to begin with. But I will try.
All of the world’s nations are locked in an ongoing religious war, the actual reasons for which have long been forgotten. Any semblance of remaining government consists entirely of shadowy cabals and despoiled actors engaged in a sinister roundelay of limitless financial and moral corruption. Some of these malign actors decide it is important to hold a benefit concert, with Jack Fate as the headliner. He is released from prison for this purpose. At one point, Jeff Bridges, playing a doomed investigative journalist, says to Dylan’s Jack Fate: “You know the singer from the Bee Gees? He sounds a lot like Gene Pitney.” There is a concert that is interrupted by an armed insurgency. The journalist is stabbed with a knife or a broken bottle and then beaten to death with a guitar. Jack Fate gets sent back to prison. Look, this is the best I can do, You’re just going to have to go watch if you want more.
Is Masked and Anonymous a good movie? I don’t think you can really make the case, credibly. Roger Ebert, in keeping with the broader critical community, gave it a half star and called it “a vanity production beyond all reason.” Is it an interesting movie? That’s a harder question. There’s lots of great music, both from Dylan and his band and others recording old Dylan songs in other languages.
