★ Habitually enigmatic, Bob Dylan was never going to serve up anything as flatly orthodox as a straightforward livestream. Presenting humdrum reality is no longer what he does (if indeed he ever did). Guarded, ingenious, witty and self-aware, Dylan has long been in the business of meticulously preserving his legend by presenting various simulcra of the truth to accentuate his enigma. From his ‘novelistic’ memoir (Chronicles Volume One) to Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (Scorsese’s fanciful ‘documentary’ remix of reality), the instinctive improviser cannily airbrushes the truth as habitually as he regularly rearranges the flawless jewels in his back catalogue’s crown.
There is no Bon Bon Club in Marseille. Shadow Kingdom, an ‘exclusive broadcast event’ beautifully directed by Alma Har’el in evocative monochrome, finds Dylan and his five-piece band on a tiny stage in the corner of a 1940s film-noir roadside diner playing to a handful of blasé chain smokers in apposite costume. Guitarists’ fingers give lie to any claim to live performance, while differing set-ups for each song accentuate a cinematic unreality, but Dylan is in fine voice, and the latest incarnations of such classics as When I Paint My Masterpiece, Tombstone Blues and Forever Young hypnotic in their enhanced intensity.