No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) is Martin Scorsese's documentary, free to watch online. Across roughly three and a half hours it traces how a shy kid from Minnesota became the voice a generation kept arguing over.

Scorsese fixes on the years between 1961 and 1966: the move to Greenwich Village, couches borrowed from friends, the first songs in smoky coffeehouses. Then the fame, the "protest singer" tag Dylan kept trying to shake, and the night he plugged in an electric guitar and half the crowd jeered the folk hero they'd worshipped a year earlier. On camera you hear Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Dave Van Ronk, Suze Rotolo and Robbie Robertson — and Dylan himself, talking at length, which almost never happens.

The film is built from archival footage, concert reels and long sit-down interviews, much of it unseen before this project. Scorsese doesn't carve a statue; he shows a man changing faster than his audience or his critics could keep up. It's the best way in for anyone who wants to understand where the early Dylan came from instead of just hearing the hits. Stream No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) online on iFILM.