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Review

Return with us to those glorious days of yesteryear, replete with nonlinear logic, rabid metaphor, raging hyperbole and an enviable innocence in the face of all cynicism and dark knowledge. Masked and Anonymous is set in an all-too-possible near-future: America is wracked by bloody civil war, the homeless line the streets of once-great cities, and a troubadour is released after many years of incarceration with the proviso that he performs in a televised benefit for an ill-defined cause. Jack Fate (Dylan), legend, enigma, voice of his generation and unknown by the next, travels by bus to L.A. as the President of these United States lays on his deathbed with his replacement in the wings. Militias roam the countryside summarily executing the unarmed at random and with impunity. America’s eternal war with itself has reached a new level; forget the Revolution — Armageddon is being televised. A pantheon of the Hollywood hip is sprinkled throughout this cool collage of senseless, pretentious dialogue and posturing as content. But, after all, we stopped making sense decades ago and eschewed content after the penning of the Bill of Rights. You will either love or hate this collaboration between Dylan and Larry Charles; but however you cut it, it’s a much better use of '60s iconography than a Gap commercial. Writers Petrov and Fontaine are pseudonyms for Dylan and director Charles.