Bob Dylan – We Better Talk This Over Review

The only person we cannot trust for a full account of his influences and writing style is the man who knows most of all. Bob Dylan remains an enigmatic figure because of his audience, not because of his dealings. He stays elusive enough to maintain a degree of separation from his music with the reason being, it would seem, to maintain its fresh appeal. Some view Dylan as a deity, those who would fall at his feet if they were given the chance. But to do so removes the human nature and flourish of the man behind so many hits. We Better Talk This Over, a documentary detailing the ins and outs of Dylan in the lead-up and fallout of Street-Legal, is not concerned with image or impression. All it wants to do, in the hands of editor Trev Gibb, is paint an accurate portrait without the bigger-than-God image projected onto Dylan.  

John Henry Hammond knew what Colombia had on their hands, but the label did not. It was rosy for a decade or more and the turn of quality to come from post-Desire efforts was truly unexpected. Renaldo & Clara is where the critics, and the public, turned on Dylan. Peter Stone Brown takes a limited stance as a documentarian, planting himself right in the history on which he has no impact. But he assembles it and the clippings well, which is the first definite step to take. Dylan, keen to separate the art from his personal life, has trouble making his line of argument stick. It is moved by the fascinating choices Dylan was making during the late 1970s, much of it a response to feeling stuck. His innovations on stage and off, notably Live at Budokan, are featured here and it makes all the difference to We Better Talk This Over.  

Dylan is always spinning plates, making the most of artistic freedom and financial success on his albums to keep busy with passion projects. It just appears those projects, from Street-Legal to Renaldo & Clara, were excessive and made for the wrong audiences. Time has salvaged much of it, Live at Budokan thankfully included, but Brown does a solid job of getting to the core of why it was rejected in the first place. But suggestions and comparisons between Elvis Presley and Dylan, and not being able to make heads or tails of some Street-Legal build-up, while honest, is a limitation which hinders the documentary. It is useful as a collection of the facts but it does not continue with any new point beyond a cold and opinionated, weighed in the favour of Dylan, documentary.  

We Better Talk This Over is the sort of documentary made by a man with many files and papers on his desk. There is coverage of every little angle, the sort of details which would make a dedicated Dylan fan swoon. But therein lies the problem. We Better Talk This Over presents this flatly, with text on the screen instead of a voiceover, with a rapid back-and-forth which becomes nonsensical as hour one comes to a close, opening with discussions on Blood on the Tracks and its reinterpretation. Not long after, it is off to the Second World War and a recount of history’s worst people. An tone set and presented by a passionate fan with as blinkered a view as the many critics put down throughout the documentary. Its conclusions feel like opinions, its presentation wild and points even wilder.