Visions of the Flood. Masked and Anonymous between “Love & Theft” and Modern Times

In the film Masked and Anonymous (Larry Charles, 2003), Bob Dylan seems to use cinema to play hide-and-seek with his multiple identities, assume a mask and shadowbox with an alias. Precisely set between the celebrated albums “Love and Theft” (2001) and Modern Times (2006), Masked and Anonymous, certainly not a peak in Bob Dylan's long artistic journey, is nonetheless an important key to understanding his commitment and intention in the first decade of 21st century. Like the two albums, the film is built on lyrical images, trademarks, obsessions, counter-positions, remote visions, narrative dead-ends. The film also permits Dylan to dedicate space to one of his favorite topics. If Masked and Anonymous is, as many critics have noted, a Bob Dylan song in form of film, it is certainly an “apocalypse song”, a sort of sub-genre in Dylan's songwriting at least since “A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall”. Only the “loyal and much-loved companions” from what Greil Marcus calls “Smithsville”, or the “Invisible Republic”, offer an ethical vision that opposes to dystopia.